80 COLUBER VERNALIS. 
The body is cylindrical, and covered above with small elongated, rhomboidal, 
smooth scales, and with plates below. The tail is long, thick at its root, but soon 
becomes slender. 
Cotour. The head above is beautiful grass-green; the jaws are yellowish- 
white, tinged with green. ‘The body and tail above are coloured like the head; 
the belly is yellowish-white. 
Dimensions. Length of head, 7 lines; length of body to vent, 12 inches; length 
of tail beyond the vent, 7 inches: total length, 19 inches 7 lines. ‘They sometimes 
reach a greater size. In the specimen here described, there were 128 abdominal 
plates, and 89 sub-caudal bifid plates. 
Hasirs. This is a very gentle animal, and can be handled with impunity; it 
seeks meadows of high grass, where crickets and grasshoppers abound, on 
which it feeds, and is mostly found on the ground, though I have at times seen it 
stretched on the branches of low shrubs, as the dwarf willow, &c. 
GrocraruicaL Distrisution. The Coluber vernalis seems peculiarly a northern 
animal; it is first seen in Maine; it is abundant in Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
New York and Pennsylvania; but I have never yet heard of its existence as far 
south as Virginia. 
GeneraL Remarks. This serpent, from its similarity of colour, seems to have 
been confounded with the Leptophis estivus by herpetologists, until Dr. Dekay 
observed that its scales were smooth,—that it was a smaller animal;—that the 
proportion of its different parts were not the same, and that it was entirely a 
northern reptile; and applied to it the specific name of vernalis. 
