July 25, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



151 



to suppose stability can be attained in any 

 otter way. Supplementary rules must be ex- 

 pected from time to time and are fully advis- 

 able, but not revolutionary changes in the al- 

 ready accepted rules. No one has ever 

 claimed, as far as I know, that the possibili- 

 ties of progress in the rules are exhausted or 

 ever will be. 



I confess myself entirely unable to under- 

 stand Dr. Cook's characterization of De Can- 

 dolle's annotated rules as 'quite lacking in 

 logical arrangement and definite statement.' 



These are the very characteristics which it 

 seems to me they possess in an eminent de- 

 gree, though naturally they do not go as far 

 as required by the needs of science thirty-five 

 years later. Moreover, I do not hesitate to 

 say that 'evolutionary conceptions' of nature 

 and systems of 'recording the results of bio- 

 logical study' have nothing whatever to do 

 with the rules of nomenclature. I cannot 

 help suspecting that the attempt to eombiue 

 two or three irreconcilable categories in one 

 system is at the bottom of Dr. Cook's diificul- 

 ties. It may be practicable to devise a sys- 

 tem which would exhibit evolutionary concep- 

 tions, and this might be very useful if it 

 jn-oved possible; but this system would not 

 be that which we use for animals and plants 

 according to Linnseus and his followers, and 

 the two things are incapable of combination. 

 The attempt to mix them would only result 

 in intensified confusion. 



Wm. H. Dall. 



Smithsonian Institution, 

 July 7, 1902. 



RANGE OF THE FOX SNAKE. 



To THE Editor of Science : Traditions often 

 develop into truths for want of critical exami- 

 nation at an early stage in their career. 



In his very complete catalogue of New York 

 snakes, lately issued, Mr. E. C. Eckel refers to 

 Dr. J. A. Allen as having 'described' a speci- 

 men of the fox snake {Coluber vulpinus) as 

 captured in 1S61 near Wenham, Mass., and- in 

 Science of June 27 Mr. Max Morse adopts 

 the statement and suggests that Professor 

 Cope, in fixing the range of this species, over- 

 looked this record. 



The references which evaded the minute in- 

 spection of my late friend. Professor Cope, 

 were very few, and fewer still, after capture, 

 escaped from that extraordinary memory. As 

 a matter of fact he did have this record in 

 mind in his Check List of 1875, where Massa- 

 chusetts was given as the eastern limit of this 

 species. The fact that this reported extra- 

 limital occurrence is now unverifiable is 

 doubtless the real reason why it was passed 

 over by Cope in his later work, as it was by 

 myself in preparing, two years ago, a review 

 of North American snakes. 



In reality Dr. Allen did not 'describe' this 

 specimen, nor had he apparently ever seen it; 

 he merely in 1869 stated that a specimen had 

 been entered on the catalogue of the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology, as having been re- 

 ceived from Wenham, Mass., in 1861, and that 

 Professor E. W. Piitnani believed the identi- 

 fication to be correct. That Dr. Allen himself 

 doubted this is shown by the language of his 

 next sentence: 'If it is this species, etc' 

 Forty years ago herpetologists were less plenti- 

 ful, and identification of species was less exact, 

 than at present, and it is easily conceivable 

 that one not fully familiar with the grovip 

 might have mistaken an example of Ophiholus 

 doliatus triangulus for the then little-known 

 C-ohiber vulpinus. Indeed Baird and Girard, 

 in the original description of the latter species, 

 mention the similarity in general aspect of 

 the two. That there was such an error in 

 identification is much more likely than that 

 a large and conspicuous species, not otherwise 

 known east of Ohio, should have naturally 

 occurred at a point so distant as the extreme 

 northeastern county of Massachusetts. 



A suggestive ease is that of a living OpM- 

 holits rhombomaciilatus received by me in June 

 of last year, with the history from a well-in- 

 tentioned source, of its capture during the 

 previous September, near Erie, Pa. Now this 

 rather rare species has never, to my knowledge, 

 been previously detected north of the District 

 of Columbia, and the best explanation of its 

 supposed occurrence at such a remote point 

 seems to lie in an inference from the fact that 

 the specimen had passed through the hands of 

 a person from a southern State, who was 



