680 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History [Vol. XLVI 



Verticaria hyperythra schmidti Van Denburgh and Slevin 



Verticaria sericea Meek, 1905, p. 14. 



Verticaria hyperythra schmidti Van Denburgh and Slevin, 1921c, p. 397. 



Range. — San Antonio (in northern Lower California) to Conception Ba} r and 

 San Marcos Island. 



Lower Californian Records. — Agnas Escondito, San Antonio, San Salado 

 Canon ; and Rosarito, Meek, 1905, p. 14; San Marcos Island, Van Denburgh and 

 Slevin, 1921c, p. 397. 



Two specimens of Verticaria in the Albatross collection, from Castro 

 Rancho, Concepcion Bay (U. S. N. M. No. 64252, and A. M. N. H. No. 

 5524) have a mid-dorsal light line, forked anteriorly, and four supra- 

 oculars, and are accordingly identified with the form found on the island 

 of San Marcos, to which my name is attached through the courtesy of 

 Dr. Van Denburgh. A third specimen, from Mulege (A. M. N. H. No. 

 5523), has the typical coloration of V. h. beldingi, but I have included it 

 with the present form on geographical grounds and on the evidence of 

 specimens from northern Lower California. 



Examination of the specimens from northern Lower California re- 

 corded by Meek as V. sericea shows that his reason for so recording them 

 was their possession of the sericea color pattern; seven out of eleven 

 specimens have a sharply defined median dorsal white line, dividing at 

 the shoulders or a little farther back and sending the two branches to the 

 parietals. Six of these specimens are from San Antonio, one from Aguas 

 Escondito. The • remaining four specimens from San Salado Canon, 

 Rosarito, Aguas Escondito and San Antonio exhibit various stages in the 

 fusion of the two dorsal lines. In one, they are juxtaposed, but not 

 actually united, on the posterior half of the body; in one, they are 

 plainly fused on the posterior third of the back; in two, they unite at 

 mid-body, but separate again for a short distance, reuniting at the base 

 of the tail; three of these specimens show traces anteriorly of the fainter 

 median dorsal line which is present in the normal pattern of both hypery- 

 thra and beldingi. Nine out of twelve specimens examined by me have 

 the sericea type of color pattern. Van Denburgh's series of thirty-eight 

 specimens of V. h. beldingi (1895, p. 131) did not exhibit this variation, and 

 Van Denburgh and Slevin (1920, p. 64) in their recent paper, with twenty- 

 four fresh specimens at hand from Ensenada, make no mention of it. 



As far as I can discover, the specimens before me with the sericea 

 color pattern or with a pattern intermediate between that of sericea and 

 hyperythra are not structurally distinguishable from V. h. beldingi; and 

 the color pattern itself is not firmly fixed, although it appears in the 

 majority of the specimens before me. The specimens from Santa Rosalia 



