188 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA. [No.?. 



tatingly refer it to the Upper Californian species, bad as the figure 

 is, and not to Ph. corohatum from Cape St. Lucas. However, iu his 

 'Catalogue of the Specimens of Lizards in the British Museum' (1845), 

 Gray himself identifies his species with Ph. coronatum and states in so 

 many words that his Ph. blainvillii was based upon a specimen presented 

 by Prof. De Blaiuville (see also his statement in the introduction, p. v., 

 that "the specimens presented by M. De Blainville may be regarded 

 as the types of the species described by that j)rofessor in the Nouveaux 

 Memoir es du Museum).''' 1 In addition he enumerates three more speci- 

 mens from 'California.' This would seem to settle the case in favor 

 of making Ph. coronatum and Ph. blainvillii synonymous, but there are 

 yet two possibilities. First, it must be remembered that Botta, whose 

 collection was the basis of De Blainville's description, evidently col- 

 lected both at the Cape St. Lucas (where he obtained Callisaurus dra- 

 conoides, Cyclura acanthura, Coluber vertebralis), and also further north 

 in Upper California, probably near San Diego (where he secured Coluber 

 catenifer; C. inf emails', C. calif or niae). It is, therefore, quite possible 

 that he collected horned-toads at both places, and that the young speci- 

 men presented to the British Museum in reality was different from Ph. 

 coronatum. Whether thisbethecasecouldeasilybe settledinthe British 

 Museum, where the specimen is still preserved. In the second place, it 

 is possible that Gray had figured one of the other specimens then in the 

 British Museum, and that the specimen figured belongs to the Upper 

 Californian species. If that be the case the name Ph. blainvillii 

 would stick to the latter no matter which specimens Gray subsequently 

 might designate as the type. 



There is some additional inferential evidence which tends to corrobo- 

 rate this opinion, viz, that Boulenger with the above specimens before 

 him and additional specimens from Monterey refers them all to one 

 species (Cat. Liz. Brit. Mus., u, 1885, pp. 243, 244), as it seems but little 

 probable that he should have failed to appreciate the great difference, 

 had both species been represented in his series. 



The geographical distribution of Ph. blainvillii includes the interior 

 valley of California as well as the entire western slope of the various 

 coast ranges, but it is not found, so far as I know, anywhere in the 

 true desert region. It is true that Yarrow's Catalogue (Bull. U. S. Nat. 

 Mus., No. 24, 1883, p. 70) enumerates two specimens as having been 

 collected by Dr. Loew in the Mohave Desert, but I have good reasons 

 for asserting that the locality is in all probability erroneous. In the 

 original entry of No. 8647 only one specimen is registered, while the 

 bottle now contains three specimens so numbered, a fact which throws 

 discredit upon the whole entry; and as Dr. Loew collected near Santa 

 Barbara and at Santa Cruz Island in June, 1875, as shown by the 

 records, the probability is that the specimens in question came from 

 one or both of those localities. 



It is to Ph. blainvillii that the published accounts about ejectiDg 



