Reptiles and Batrachians of the Edinburgh District. 503 
garden at the Grange in September 1893. Mr Eagle Clarke, 
to whom both were taken, has kindly supplied me with the 
following particulars regarding them :— 
“In July 1892 a specimen of Zropidonotus was brought to 
me which had been captured on the 10th of that month on 
(or beside) a wall in Devon Place, Haymarket, Edinburgh. 
This specimen was remarkable, inasmuch as it had two light 
lateral stripes or lines of a pale greenish-grey tint, one on 
each side of the middle of the back and above the rows of 
black spots. I recognised its close relationship with our 
common English snake (7° natrix), but I failed to find any 
such variety described in the works to which I had access, 
Its length was 24 inches; weight, 63 grammes. 
“In September 1893 I was asked to examine another 
snake which had been killed in a garden in Grange Loan, 
Edinburgh, and desired to say whether it belonged to a 
poisonous species or not—a question of some anxiety to the 
tenant of the residence, more especially as two other snakes 
had been observed along with it in some ivy growing on the 
garden wall. The specimen submitted was a typical example 
of the Common or Ringed Snake. 
“This second instance of the occurrence of snakes within 
the city boundaries led me to again examine the Devon 
Place specimen, and to send a short description of it to my 
friend Mr G. A. Boulenger, of the British Museum, who 
kindly informed me that I was quite correct iu my suspicions 
regarding its relationship to 7ropidonotus natrixz, and that it 
was indeed only a variety of that species, which is common 
in Southern Europe, Asia Minor, and the shores of the 
Mediterranean. This variety has, I find, been described as a 
distinct species by Pallas under the name of Coluber persa; 
by Bibron as C. bilineatus ; and as a variety of the common 
snake by Bonaparte, who names it Natrix torquata, var. 
murorum. It has lately been discovered in the environs of 
Nantes, and forms the subject of a useful paper by MM. de 
Churchville (Bull. Soc. Sct. Nat. de 0 Quest de la France, 1892, 
pp. 35-38, Plate 11), where the form is well depicted in a 
coloured plate. The Ringed Snake can only, I think, occur 
as au escape in Edinburgh, and that this is so is borne out 
