828 13. COLUBRIDA 
in varying degrees, while others are fairly typical of 
vagrans, under which heading they are listed. Apparently 
the type of Cope’s Eutenia elegans brunnea from Fort Bid- 
well, Modoc County, was such an intermediate specimen. 
Specimens from Grasshopper and Eagle lakes, Lassen 
County, California, have characters of both elegans and 
biscutatus in varying degree. Certain specimens from the 
Yosemite Valley, Kings River, and Jackass Meadow, are 
more or less intermediate between 7. 0. elegans and T. o. 
couchii. A few of the specimens from the east slope of the 
Sierra Nevada also seem to be intergrades. However, the 
snakesfrom the higher altitudes in the Sierra Nevada seem to 
be constantly true to type. Those from the San Bernardino 
Mountains also show no departure from this type, although 
their range is in part overlapped by that of 7. 0. hammondii. 
No one could question the validity of this race as it occurs 
in these southern mountains, and the fact that intergrades 
between it and other races occur in the more northern por- 
tion of its range should not cause us to refuse it recognition. 
We formerly confused this form and the striped race 
from the coast of California, describing both as T. elegans. 
Although they are rather similar in appearance, they differ 
in a number of respects. The mountain form usually has 
twenty-one rows of scales, while the coast subspecies usually 
has nineteen. The average number of gastrosteges in T. o. 
elegans also is greater, the dorsal line is narrower, and we 
have never seen any red in the coloration of 7. 0. elegans. 
Just where and how these two forms meet has yet to be 
worked out. So far as we now know the one is confined to 
the interior mountains and the other to the coast region. 
Between them lies the area occupied by T. 0. couchii in the 
north and 7. 0. hammondii in the south. T. 0. couchii and 
T. 0. hammondii are mainly to be found in the Lower and 
