586 KEPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1902. 



line and a broad lateral line in continuation of the latter, pale buffy 

 pink, all the light lines and bands more or less edged with dusky; 

 triangle on top of head forward of a line through the center of the 

 eyes distinctly paler, a dusky cross-line at middle of eyes defining the 

 triangular space behind; below pale, greenish on belly; underside of 

 femur dull ferruginous; iris golden, shaded with reddish and brownish 

 and reticulated with blackish. 



At our camp about 500 feet below the top of El Yunque Mountain 

 (3,485 feet) I gathered, between February 24 and February 27, over 

 50 specimens, adult and young, upon which I based my observations 

 on the truly extraordinary variability of this species, both as to ground 

 color and pattern. 



While the adult specimens seem to show a more uniform pattern with 

 certain nearly constant features, namely, a pale triangular snout to 

 the middle of the upper eyelids, followed b}^ a dusky cross-band and a 

 blackish narrow streak along the canthus rostralis through the eye 

 (the horizontal pupil forming part of this line) over the ear to the 

 shoulder, the individual range in their ground color is very great, from 

 pale olive gray through clay color and pale cinnamon rufous to dark 

 sepia. Their power of changing their general color is also great, for 

 one which when caught on the ground under an old palm leaf was 

 nearly blackish brown, changed within a quarter of an hour to pale 

 clay color. The most abnormal among the large specimens is rather 

 dark grayish brown (slightly paler after being caught) and covered 

 with numerous cream-colored irregular blotches, which on the legs 

 assume the character of more or less regular cross-bands. But the 

 young specimens show a much wider and more perplexing range of 

 variation, for while the pattern indicated above for the adults can be 

 traced in perhaps most of these }^oungsters, in others it is absolutely 

 obliterated. Yet in all this bewildering variability there may be 

 traced several different styles which, however, are connected by all 

 sort of intermediate individuals. 



The most striking of these patterns consists in a cinnamon-colored 

 stripe down the middle of the back edged with dusky and widening 

 on the sacrum and toward the head, where it is abruptly cut off by the 

 interorbital dusky cross-band; this triangular expansion thus formed 

 incloses on the occiput a small spot which, like the sides, is bright 

 light yellowish green; the pale triangle on the snout and cross-bands 

 on the hind limbs are similarly colored, but much duller. This style is 

 not rare, though apparently confined to the smallest specimens. I 

 found four essentially alike at the base of the leaves of the same air- 

 plant, probably belonging to the same brood. 



The most common pattern (found in perhaps 75 per cent of the 

 young specimens) consists in a pair of elongated pale dorsal marks 

 slightly curved, with the convexity toward the median line, as well as 



