20. PLESTIODON 585 



Description. — Body long and rounded, with long tail 

 and short legs. Nasal plate small, in contact with internasal, 

 postnasal, first labial, and rostral. Postnasal touching nasal, 

 internasal, anterior loreal, and first and second labial plates. 

 Anterior loreal forming sutures with postnasal, internasal, 

 frontonasal, prefrontal, posterior loreal, and second and 

 third labials. Posterior loreal larger than anterior, and 

 bordered behind by two preoculars and first superciliary. 

 Four large supraoculars, first three touching long frontal. 

 Interparietal larger than either frontoparietal, but narrower 

 than usually in P. skiltonianus, and often not separating 

 parietals. Parietals very large and followed by one or two 

 pairs of wide occipitals. Temporals very large. Upper 

 labials eight in number, eighth largest. Symphyseal very 

 broad and followed by two wide azygous sublabials, and 

 several large, paired sublabials, in contact with infralabials. 

 All scales on body, limbs and tail similar in shape, very 

 smooth, and strongly imbricate. Median series of lower 

 caudals greatly enlarged transversely. Upper caudals about 

 size of dorsals, larger than laterals, ventrals and gulars. 

 Twenty-four or 26 rows of scales encircling the middle of 

 body. Ear-opening about size of an abdominal scale, and 

 feebly denticulate anteriorly. In old specimens of this 

 skink, as in other species the temporal regions become more 

 or less swollen. 



The adult is brownish olive above, slightly bronzed or 

 faintly washed with red, without traces of longitudinal lines. 

 The dorsal scales are edged with darker brown, and often, 

 especially toward the tail, show central spots of verdigris 

 green. The tail is greenish or grayish yellow. The limbs 

 are colored like the back. The entire head and more or less 

 of the neck are bright poppy red slightly tinged with carmine. 

 This color is brightest just behind the ear-opening, some- 

 times slightly mixed with olive on top of the head. The 



