606 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XX. 



the back to the tail tip. These involve one whole and two half 

 rows of scales, and are separated from one another by five whole 

 and two half rows. The ground colour is further ornamented 

 with black, or blackish somewhat irregular crossbars which are 

 always most obvious anteriorty, and often wholly disappear before 

 the vent. The head is olivaceous-brown fading laterally to pearly- 

 whitish, yellow or orange on the lips. There is I think always a 

 blackish vertical short loreal streak, and generally some of the last 

 supralabials are margined posteriorly with black. The chin is 

 whitish, and the throat pearly-white, pale or bright yellow, or 

 orange, these vivid hues being seen alike in some specimens of both 

 the blue and red varieties. The belly is pearly-whitish with 

 generally some roundish, scattered small, lateral black spots, chiefly 

 anteriorly. Often an ill-defined pinkish or lilac suffusion is to be 

 seen at the edge of the ventral shields. When desquamation is 

 impending much of the beautiful colouring may be obscured but 

 when once the little snake has divested itself of its old and seedy 

 looking raiment, it is just the little dandy that its specific name 

 implies. 



Varieties. — Two distinct colour varieties are to be met with, one 

 which may be styled the forma typica, and the other for which I 

 pi-opose the name erythrostictus. 



Variety (A). Forma typica. — In this the overlapped margins of 

 the scales, especially towards their bases are adorned with blue-grey 

 or pale-blue often of a shade almost identical with that very beauti- 

 ful flower Plumbago capensis. This ornamentation is concealed by 

 the imbrication of the scales when the snake is quiescent, and only 

 comes into view when the snake under alarm or excitement inflates 

 itself. It is much more conspicuous, or may be wholly confined to 

 the anterior half or third of the body. This is the common type 

 which is universally to be met with throughout the area of its dis- 

 tribution in Plains and Hills alike. 



Variety (B). Erythrostictus. — In this the far more beautiful 

 variety, bright vermilion, replaces the blue adornment of forma 

 typica. The vermilion however is usually if not always more exten- 

 sively distributed than the blue of the last variety, so that it is 

 usually more or less evident even in the quiescent state of the 



