298 jR. E. Call — Serpent from Iowa. 



Ohio, wliicli reports are the only ones mentioning it as occur- 

 ring north of the Ohio River. The more eastern forms, as 

 would appear from Mr. German's remarks, differ but little 

 from the type that Hallowell had before him in drawing up 

 his description ; the chief differences being those of dimension, 

 and the position of the eye with reference to the third and 

 fourth supralabial plates. 



To complete the record of the species, the following brief 

 history of the type form is given. The form lineatum was 

 described by Hallowell"* and referred to his genus Microps,\ 

 in 1856. Four years later Cope separated it from the genus 

 Storeria to which it had been referred by various authors, and 

 made it the type of his new genus Trojyidoclonium. Certain 

 other forms have been included in the same genus but are now 

 distinguished ; with these we have here nothing to do.J 



I propose, therefore, to describe this form under the name of 



Tropidodoniam lineatum Towai, subsp. nov. 



Reptile small ; head hardly distinguished from body ; eye 

 small, placed over the third and fourth labial plates, circular; 

 head flat posteriorly but before the eyes slightly convex ; 

 mouth large, direct to the end of the third labial, thence gently 

 curved to the angle ; snout rounded, blunt ; head shields nine, 

 frontals quite twice the size of the prefrontals, rostral rather 

 large, somewhat broader than high, blunt or rounded, triangu- 

 lar ; nasal one, grooved below the nostril, longer than broad ; 

 loreal small, elongate, low, its upper margin on a direct line 

 with the center of the eye and the nostril ; preorbital one, ex- 

 cavated, forming a shallow pit in front of eye ; postorbitals 

 two, small, subequal, the upper extending a short distance in 

 front of the posterior margin of the eye; one temporal on the 

 left side, two on the right ; labials seven, the sixth large, not 

 extending to the edge of lip, but wedged in between the fifth 

 and seventh ; the fifth labial the largest ; inf ralabials six, the 

 fourth largest ; gulars in three rows ; scales in nineteen rows ; 

 the small dorsal scales nearly all slightly notched ; gastrosteges 

 143 to 148. 



The general ground color above is light chocolate, with a 

 median light — whitish or straw-yellow— stripe extending from 

 the base of occipitals to tip of tail, and occupying all the 

 median scale, and half of the row adjoining on each side; 



* Proc. Philad. Academy of Nat. Sci., p. 241, 1856. 



f The generic name was bestowed in reference to the very small eyes. This 

 generic Dame had, however, been preoccupied in the Beptilia by Wagler, in 1828, 

 by Agassiz in the Fishes, in 1833 ; and had also been used in 1823 and 1833 to 

 name genera in the Coleoptera and the Hymenoptera respectively. 



X Vide Cope in Proc. Philad. Acad, of Nat. Sci., 1860, p. 76; also in Proc. U. S- 

 Nat'l Mus., 1888, p. 391. 



