REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS OP TEXAS 43 



135. SiSTRURUS CATENATUS CONSORS Baird and Girard. 



Massasauga: Large Ground Rattlesnake. 

 Western Texas, principally in the Panhandle and 

 on the southern plains, southeastward over the Ed- 

 wards Plateau through the Lower Rio Grande coun- 

 try to the coast. In the coast country ranges north to 

 Victoria and Matagorda counties. The type speci- 

 men of consors was collected at Indianola, Matagorda 

 County, while the types of edwardsii Baird and Gir- 

 ard (now considered the same thing) were from 

 Sonora, Sutton County. This species was formerly 

 abundant in the Panhandle district, but farmers re- 

 port that it is getting scarcer every year. Mr. Lutrell 

 of Claude, Armstrong County, informs me that he 

 has often killed from fifty to sixty during one wheat 

 season, but that during the past four or five years he 

 has not seen more than half a dozen in any one year. 



136. Crotalus molossus Baird and Girard. Dog-faced 



Rattlesnake. 



In Texas, this species is known only from Pecos 

 and El Paso Counties. The type specimen of Hallo- 

 well's Crotalus ornatus, collected by Dr. Heermann 

 at the Pecos river, en route between El Paso and San 

 Antonio, was until quite recent years the only Texas 

 specimen of which we had any record. In 1901 the 

 United States Biological Survey party collected a 

 number of specimens of the dog-faced rattlesnake, 

 and in his report on the results of the survey, Mr. 

 Vernon Bailey writes the following: "This is the 

 common rattlesnake of the Guadalupe Mountains in 

 Upper Sonoran zone on both sides of the Texas and 

 New Mexico line. Specimens were collected near 

 the edge of the Transition zone on the east and west 

 slopes of the mountains at 6,500 and 6,800 feet, but I 

 assume that this species belongs to Upper Sonoran. 

 A flat skin collected by Gary at a point 25 miles west 

 of Sheffield is apparently this species. We found this 

 sn^ke in August, 1901, in the gulches high up on the 



