13. COLUBRID.-E 



in varying degrees, while others are fairly typical of 

 vagransy under which heading they are listed. Apparently 

 the type of Cope's Eulcenia 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 

 b'lscutatus in varying degree. Certain specimens from the 

 Yosemite Valley, Kings River, and Jackass Meadow, are 

 more or less intermediate between T. o. 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 T. o. hammondiu 

 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 T. o. 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. o. couchii in the 

 north and T. o. hammondii in the south. T. o. couchii and 

 T. 0. hammondii are mainly to be found in the Lower and 



