BARBOUR — A RACK OF THE KING SNAKE ^ NE.Z.C. 



Vol. VII 



be more highly accentuated under the peculiar environmental 

 conditions of extreme southeastern Florida. Here the sand is 

 replaced by Hmestone, supporting a far more meagre growth of 

 scrub palmetto and other sheltering plants, and becoming ex- 

 tremely hot, baked as it is by the almost tropical sun. The 

 hammocks also are far more tropical in appearance, and offer 

 but little similarity in character of vegetation or in identity of 

 species with those of fifty miles further north. 



I should have been loath to describe this race, having but a 

 single example, had it not been that I found another killed in 

 the highway near Homestead, Florida, which although badly 

 crushed showed the same color characters as the one I shall 

 name, and I take this fact to indicate that probably the colora- 

 tion is fixed in this area. Ditmars' and A. E. Brown's remarks 

 as to the inadvisability of naming the southern king snake, on 

 account of the connecting variations, is quite typical of zoologi- 

 cal park experience. Specimens received from dealers usually 

 are at least of uncertain origin. King snakes taken at the same 

 place, in so far as my somewhat limited experience goes, are 

 singularly unvarying in coloration. 



The new form is named for Mr. Winthrop S. Brooks, my 

 companion on many excursions. 



Lampropeltis getulus brooksi subsp. nov. 

 Plate I 



Type, an adult, 1350 mm. long, M. C. Z. no. 12,456, from 14 miles 

 southwest of Florida City, Dade Co., Florida (near the Royal Palm State 

 Park, formerly called Paradise Key). W. S. Brooks and C. A. Mosier, 

 collectors. 



Similar to L. getulus floridana Blanchard, in squamation, but differing 

 widely in coloration. Pattern so reduced as to be almost everywhere un- 

 discernible. Each scale dull chrome yellow with a conspicuous very dark 

 brown apical spot. 



I have followed Mr. Blanchard in using a trinomial, although 

 I have not yet observed real intergradation between any of these 



