SYSTEMATIC ACCOUNT OF THE SPECIES. 191 
Description: — Adult M. C. Z. 10,836. Cuba: Pinar del Rio; Guane, 
February, 1915. Thomas Barbour. 
Head not very conspicuously distinct from neck; rostral very slightly 
broader than deep, just visible from above; frontal wide but longer than broad, 
distinctly shorter than the distance from rostral, longer than the parietals; 
one (sometimes two) pre- and three (sometimes two) postoculars; nine (oer ten) 
supralabials, of which the fourth, fifth, and sixth enter the orbit: scales smooth 
in twenty-five (or 27 or 29) rows; ventrals 189 (range, 170-210) anal entire; 
subeaudals forty-two (range 25-42). 
Colour (in life): — Reddish or bluish gray, with six or eight more or less 
regular rows of spots, sometimes light edged and usually alternating; the two 
middorsal series by far the largest; belly chrome-yellow or ochraceous yellow 
with usually a double series of dark spots which may be definitely alternating or 
exactly opposite. 
Dimensions: — Total length 320 mm. 
Vent to tip of tail 40 mm. 
The habits of maculatus are those of the other species of Tropidophis and 
there seems to be nothing local about its distribution, as it is also found in 
Jamaica, Haiti, and Navassa Island. In Jamaica it is almost extinct owing to 
the appetite of the introduced mongoose. In Haiti it is also rare and there is 
. some doubt as to the validity of the form haetiana of Cope based upon Haitian 
specimens. Its peculiar character was supposed to be due to the presence of an 
interparietal, and twenty-nine scale-rows. But all Haitian examples do not have 
interparietal and although we have not observed the scale ever in specimens 
from elsewhere; the validity of haetiana must therefore remain in doubt until a 
large series from both Cuba and Haiti can be secured. As to the status of 
the species upon Navassa we know nothing. 
59. TROPIDOPHIS sEMIcINcTUS (Gundlach & Peters). 
Plate 15, fig. 4-6. 
Maja. 
Diagnosis: — A rather small, sluggish, inoffensive constrictor with a double 
series of large conspicuous dark spots, sometimes confluent into cross-bands 
one on each side of the distinctly compressed body. 
