590 9. SCINCIDJE 



Descriptions Body long and rounded, with long tail 

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

 postnasal, first labial, and rostral. Postnasal (sometimes 

 absent) 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 or five large supraoculars, first two 

 or three touching long frontal. Interparietal larger than 

 either frontoparietal, but narrow, usually separating parie- 

 tals. 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- 

 six or 28 rows of scales encircling middle of body. About 

 59 scales in a row between head and tail. Ear-opening about 

 size of a dorsal scale, feebly denticulate anteriorly. In old 

 individuals of this skink, as in other species, the temporal 

 regions become more or less swollen. 



The color above, in adults, is pale olive, the edges of all 

 or many of the scales being dark brown. The lower sur- 

 faces are greenish white. The head may be tinged with red. 

 Younger individuals may show more or less indistinct re- 

 mains of longitudinal bands. 



Professor Cope states that in a very young individual, 

 head and body 34- millimeters long, "The color is an intense 

 black, rather bluish beneath. There are five excessively 

 faint, slender, whitish lines, a median dorsal, an upper 



