206 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES [Proc. 4th Ser. 



THE ELEGANS GROUP 



The second great group of our garter-snakes includes all 

 those snakes which show an apparent relationship with the 

 form which Baird and Girard named Eutaiiiia clcgans. The 

 satisfactory classification of the snakes which group themselves 

 about this central form long has been regarded as one of the 

 most difficult problems in North American herpetology. Only 

 the large material at hand has induced us to study this problem 

 again. The difficulties are such that we shall feel that the very 

 great labor involved has been justified if even a little better 

 understanding of the facts result from this study. 



As a result of former study of this group five species and 

 subspecies were recognized, as follows : — 



1. T. Icptocephala (or ordinoidcs) , a dwarf form from the 

 coast region of Washington and Oregon. 



2. T. clcgans, a striped form, from the coast and Sierra 

 Nevada of California. 



3. T. vagrans, a spotted form, from both sides of the Sierra 

 Nevada and a vast country farther east. 



4. T. vagrans biscutatns, a subspecies with an increased num- 

 ber of preoculars, from the Klamath Lake region and the 

 Pacific Northwest. 



5. T. hammondii, a form without dorsal light line, from the 

 San Diegan Fauna and the San Joaquin Valley. 



Brown, in 1903, adopted these views and- recognized these 

 same forms, but reduced elegans and vagrans to subspecific 

 rank, and regarded leptocephala as a subspecies of sirtalis which 

 ranged along the coast south to San Francisco. 



Ruthven, in 1908, divided the snakes which, in "The Reptiles 

 of the Pacific Coast," had been called T. elegans, into 

 two groups, those from the coast and those from the 

 Sierra Nevada. Following Brown, he united the former 

 with leptocephala under the name T. ordinoides. The snakes 

 from the Sierra Nevada, together with the forms T. vagrans 

 and T. vagrans biscufatus, were merged by him in a single sub- 

 species under the name T. ordinoides elegans. T. hammondii 

 was recognized by Ruthven. 



