Rocky Mountains. 18 



•■ 



agreeably to the Indian custom. A party of Omawhaws then 

 assembled, and pursued them about 15 miles, but without 

 success. 



Two Oto warriors, and a boy, nephew of Ishta-gre-ja, 

 Gray Eyes the elder, visited us this afternoon. They have 

 been hunting on Blue-Water creek, in the neighbourhood of 

 the Konzas hunting camps, arfd not distant from the village 

 of the latter ; they have been so fortunate as to take one 

 hundred and forty beavers, the skins of which they left at 

 their village, under the care of the son of Gray Eyes and 

 their squaws ; their business in this quarter is to look out for 

 the best market for their peltries. They say it was certainly 

 not the Konzas who stole the horses from their brethren, 

 who are encamped near the confluence of the Platte. They 

 attribute that theft to the Ioways, who, they say, are still 

 fools, as they always have proved themselves to be. 



and length of tail, tlie red colour of the lateral concealed spots, very suf- 

 ficiently denote its specific dissimilarity, from that most common of the ser- 

 pents of the United States. 



3. Coluber proximus. Body above black, trilineate, vertebral line 

 ocraceous, lateral one yellowish, a double white spot on the parietal plates. 



Description. Body above black, with three vitta;; vertebral vitta ocra- 

 ceous occupying the dorsal series of scales and a moiety of each one of the 

 second scries each side; latteral vitta greenish-yellow, occupying more 

 than the moiety of the seven and eight series of scales; beneath the lateral 

 vitta the black is tinged with greenish-blue; head with seven olivaceous 

 plates above; parietal ones with a double, white, longitudinal spot; inter- 

 maxillary plate pentangular, the superior termination obtusely rounded; 

 posterior canthus of the eye three scaled, of which the two inferior ones are 

 white; anterior canthus white; supermaxillary plates bluish-green; maxih. 

 ary angles with a small black dot; inferior maxilla white beneath; beneall- 

 pale greenish-blue. 



Total length 2 ft. 7 1-4 in. Plates T/8 



Tail 7 3-4 Scales 86 



Resembles Coluber saurita, ordinatus and parietalis. Numerous longi 

 tudinal, abbreviated, white lines, may be observed by dilating the black 

 portioi*of the skin as in ordinatus, these lines or spots are obsolete upon 

 the neck and upon the posterior portion of the body. The extreme tip of 

 the tail is wanting in tins specimen. 



It differs from saurita in the numerical proportion with its subcandal 

 scales bear to its plates; from ordinatus it ma> be distinguished by being 

 destitute of the two series of black points beneath; it is a much more slen 

 der serpent than parielalis, and the tail i* proportionally longer. 



