80 COLUBER VERNALIS. 



The body is cylindrical, and covered above with small elongated, rhomboidal, 

 smooth scales, and with plates below. The tail is long, thick at its root, but soon 

 becomes slender. 



Colour. The head above is beautiful grass-green; the jaws arc yellowish- 

 white, tinged with green. The body and tail above are coloured like the head; 

 the belly is yellowish-white. 



Dimensions. Length of head, 7 lines; length of body to vent, 12 inches; length 

 of tail beyond the vent, 7 inches: total length, 19 inches 7 lines. They sometimes 

 reach a greater size. In the specimen here described, there were 128 abdominal 

 plates, and 89 sub-caudal bifid plates. 



Habits. This is a very gentle animal, and can be handled with impunity; it 

 seeks meadows of high grass, where crickets and grasshoppers abound, on 

 which it feeds, and is mostly found on the ground, though I have at times seen it 

 stretched on the branches of low shrubs, as the dwarf willow, &c. 



Geographical Distribution. The Coluber vernalis seems peculiarly a northern 

 animal; it is first seen in Maine; it is abundant in Massachusetts, Connecticut, 

 New York and Pennsylvania; but I have never yet heard of its existence as far 

 south as Virginia. 



General Remarks. This serpent, from its similarity of colour, seems to have 

 been confounded with the Leptophis testivus by herpetologists, until Dr. Dekay 

 observed that its scales were smooth, — that it was a smaller animal; — that the 

 proportion of its different parts were not the same, and that it was entirely a 

 northern reptile; and applied to it the specific name of vernahs. 



