SYSTEMATIC ACCOUNT OF THE SPECIES. 183 © 
Since this was written any doubt which may have existed as to the accuracy 
of the data regarding the locality of the types of this species has been removed, 
for Messrs. Brooks and Warner captured a fine adult at McKinley, Island of 
Pines, in March, 1917. Later during 1918 the senior author and Mr. W. S&S. 
Brooks took a very large series, every one a typical palirostrata; it was also 
found abundantly in several localities in the Island of Pines, namely La 
Ceiba, Santa Barbara, and McKinley. These were found when the fields 
were ploughed. The senior author also found several blanoides by following 
ploughs on the plantation of Mr. Shaler Williams at Caimito del Guayabal, 
near the town of Guanajay. Thus it is evident that each of these species is 
peculiar to its original locality and some unknown cause has given rise to their 
surprising differentiation into full species, whereas most of the Island of Pines 
forms are but ill-defined local races. 
53. AMPHISBAENA CUBANA Peters. 
Plate 165, fig. 2. 
Culebrita ciega. 
Diagnosis: — A rather small and slender, blind, legless lizard with a lateral 
line on each side separating the dorsal from the ventral scutation. In colour, 
brown uniform or dotted. 
Description: — Adult M. C. Z. 7,936. Cuba: Soledad near Cienfuegos, 
February, 1910. Thomas Barbour. 
Rostral small, triangular, barely visible from above; prefrontals long, 
the suture between them much longer than the one between the frontals; ocular 
fused with second supralabial (as is invariably the case in our Cuban series), 
postocular rather large and squarish; a well-developed diamond-shaped tem- 
poral; eye plainly visible; a pair of occipitals almost square, in contact behind 
the frontals; three supralabials, first small, the second enormous since it in- 
cludes the ocular, third medium sized; three lower labials, the first and third 
small, the second very large indeed; mental followed by a large median post- 
mental diminishing in breadth anteroposteriorly; behind the postmental and 
between the enormous second sublabials are two large oval shields including 
three small scales, one ahead and two behind, between them; these followed by 
five ventral contour eae between the malars which*are set just inside of the 
third infralabial, and which are also broadly in contact with the second infra- 
