310 THE EEPTILES OF EGYPT. 
The largest Egyptian specimen is a female 400 millim. long, of which the tail 
measures 64 millim. ; but Dumeril and Bibron record a specimen 550 millim. in length, 
with the tail 98 millim. 
I have met with this species only along the coast-line near Alexandria. One I 
found under a stone close to the sea-shore, indeed practically on it, amid the barren 
surroundings of Canopus, another under an old kerosine-tin on a grassy spot on the 
otherwise sandy Ramleh, and a third in a barley-field on sandy ground in the Maryut 
District. 
It is distributed over Northern Africa from Egypt to the coast of Mogador, is 
present in Southern Spain, in the Balearic Islands, and on the island of Lampedusa. 
It is said to be one of the most common serpents in Algeria, where Guichenot states 
that it abounds under stones in thickets and dry and stony places. 
It lives on small rodents and lizards. 
Dr. limes informs me that its native name is lw> =besbds. 
In Africa the scales vary from 19 to 25. In Egypt they apparently never exceed 19, 
and five specimens from Tripoli in the British Museum have the same number, while 
in three from Tunisia two have the same number and one 21. Three of four Algerian 
examples have 19 scales, and the fourth 20 ; but in Morocco, from the city to the coast, 
the two numbers 23 and 25 are alone met with, the latter being exceptional. This 
numerical increase of the scales in this region recalls what occurs among other 
reptiles. In Tangier, and at Algeciras on the opposite coast, the number is 21, but 
in the Province of Andalucia as many as 23 scales are met with. 
The extent to which the sixth labial is in contact with the parietal varies considerably, 
and not unfrequently the two are quite separated by the first temporal becoming 
wedged in between the two postoculars, and in other instances only with the lower 
postocular. In the Cairo Museum, I have observed only one specimen out of four in 
which the sixth labial completely excluded the temporal from the postocular. 
The snakes from Tripoli very much resemble the Egyptian snakes in their colora- 
tion, but the ventrals are only obscurely spotted. In a Tunisian specimen the black 
spots of the back and sides become reduced to a mere black margining of the scales in 
the position occupied by the spots in Egyptian examples, and the ventrals are im- 
maculate. At Hammam Meskoutine, on the Algerian frontier of Tunisia, in a specimen 
of this species which I obtained there some years ago there is a double line of 
longitudinally disposed dark brown narrow bars along the mesial line of the back ; 
lying parallel and close together, and external to them, at about the distance of two 
scales, is a single line of dark bars, and still another between the third and fourth 
rows of scales, and a black line between the angle of some of the ventrals and the first 
dorsal scale. Ventral surface immaculate. 
In specimens from Tangier, the barring of the back becomes replaced by narrow 
black margins to the scales in the position occupied by the bars in Algerian specimens. 
