SYSTEMATIC ACCOUNT OF THE SPECIES. 181 
AMPHISBAENIDAE. 
52. CADEA BLANOIDES Stejneger. 
Plate 15, fig. 1. 
Culebrita ciega. 
Diagnosis: — A thick, rather short, eyeless, legless lizard. In colour ashy 
gray washed with a rosy pink iridescence and with small darker spots. It is 
noteworthy in having no lateral line. 
Description: — Adult M. C. Z. 7,934. Cuba: San Diego de los Bajos, 
March, 1910. Thomas Barbour. 
Snout rather acute, rounded at the tip, projecting very slightly beyond 
lower jaw; rostral medium, rectangular, higher than broad, forming a long 
suture with prefrontal; prefrontal single, large, longer than broad, roofing the 
snout; two long narrow frontals, followed by two pairs of small squarish occi- 
pitals; eye almost invisible; an elongate supraocular reaching forward to the 
nasal; three upper labials, first very small, second very large, third medium; 
mental squarish, followed by a long postmental, three lower labials, first small, 
other two very large; annuli, dorsal, 221, annuli, ventral, 182; annuli on tail, 
dorsal, seventeen; annuli on tail, ventral, fourteen; an annulus about the mid- 
dle of the body contains thirty-three segments; dorsal segments oval, ventral 
rectangular, broader than long; no lateral line; anal segments eight; praeanal 
pores, eight. 
Colour (in life): — Gray with a flesh coloured or peach-blow bloom or 
iridescence; most of the dorsal segments with a dark central spot. 
Dimensions: — Total length 224 mm. 
Vent to tip of tail 17 mm. 
This is the species which has figured for many years in the literature as 
Amphisbaena punctata Bell. Stejneger (Proc. Biol. soc. Wash., 1916, 29, p. 85) 
has shown that it is, first, not an Amphisbaena and also that Gray was entirely 
justified in making the genus Cadea to include it. He also points out that 
Amphisbaena punctata Bell, 1828, is preoccupied by A. punctata Wied, 1825, and he 
substituted the specific name blanoides, by authority of one of the least justified 
canons of the International zoélogical code of nomenclature. Certainly Cadea 
punctata would not be confused with Amphisbaena punctata if the two names 
were in present use. 
