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COLUBER OBSOLETUS.—Say. 
Plate XII. 
Cuaracters. Body above, black, beneath, whitish, with large sub-quadrate 
black spots; confluent and pale bluish near the tail; throat and neck pure white; 
sides with red marks between the scales. Pl. 228. Sc. 84. 
Syyonymes. Coluber obsoletus, Say, in Long’s Exped. to Rock. Mount., vol. i. p. 140. 
Coluber obsoletus, Harlan, Med. and Phys. Res., p. 112. 
Description. The head is sub-ovate, elongated, and covered with plates above, 
which, as far as they can be studied ina dried specimen, are of precisely the same 
size and form as in the Coluber constrictor. The nostrils are lateral, large, and 
near the snout. The body is very long and slender, and is covered above with 
small, smooth, sub-hexagonal scales, bipunctured at their tips. 
Cotour. The head is black above; the chin and throat pure white; the eye is 
large, the pupil blackish, and the iris deep bluish-black, surrounded by a silvery 
circle. The body aboye is black, the anterior half with a series of continuous 
red spots formed upon the skin between the scales, many of which have white 
marginal dashes near their bases. These red spots are not perceptible unless the 
skin be dilated so as to separate the scales. Abdomen white, slightly tinged with 
yellowish-red, dotted with black points, and spotted with large, oblong, quadrate 
marks, continuous and plumbeous near the tail. Sometimes the spots are wanting 
on the anterior half, but the posterior half and tail are always plumbeous. 
