196 



NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA. 

 List of .specimens of (Icrrhoiiotus scincicauda. 



[No. 



U.S. 

 Nat. 

 Mus. 

 No. 



Sex and 

 age. 



Locality. 



Alti- 

 tude. 



Date, 



Collector. 



Remarks. 



18016 



5 



Three Rivers, Calif 



Feet. 



July 28 

 July 27 



Fisher 



Bailey 





18G17 



Kawoah River, East Fork, Calif 



3, GOO 





Gerrhonotus scincicauda palmeri, subsp. uov. 



Diagnosis — Similar to G. scincicauda, but body much less elongated 

 and coloration above essentially different, being, according to age and 

 sex, either uniform dark olive brown with numerous black and white 

 dots on the sides, or pale bluish drab clouded with numerous ill-defined 

 and irregular blotches of brownish drab, blotches not arranged in 

 cross bands.* 



Habitat. — High elevations ot western slope of southern [only 1 ?] Sierra 

 Nevada. 



Type.—V. S. Nat. Mus., No. 18606 $ ad. South Fork Kings Eiver, 

 Calif., T. S. Palmer coll. 



Most of the Gerrhonoti brought home by the expedition belong to 

 this form, of which there is no specimen in the Museum collection from 

 any definite and undoubted locality before, and all the specimens of 

 the expedition were collected in a comparatively small area near the 

 headwaters of the Kern, Kings, and Kaweah rivers, at an altitude of 

 from about 7,000 to 9,000 feet above the sea. 



It might seem strange that there should be no name available among 

 the many defunct synonyms of Oalifornian Gerrhonoti by which to dis- 

 tinguish this form, but the fact seems to be that most of the specimens 

 so far brought to the notice of herpetologists have been collected in the 

 lower altitudes, while the present form seems to be restricted to the 

 higher altitudes of the Sierra. 



The general aspect of this form is strikingly different from all the 

 other Oalifornian Gerrhonoti, and this difference is equally well marked 

 in the youngest specimen and in the oldest. I have before me a nearly 

 unbroken series of ten specimens, from a very young one, with a body 

 only 40 mm long, up to the dark old males, and none of them can for an 

 instant be mistaken for the typical G. scincicauda from the lower valleys. 

 The whole figure is shorter and more thick set, and the broad and 

 rather distant cross-bands on the back are conspicuously abrupt, the 

 coloration being either uniform dark or else an ill-defined, often ob- 

 scure, 'pepper-and-salt' mixture. Only in one specimen (No. 18612) 

 there is a more definite arrangement of the light and dark spots, but 

 these ill-defined cross-bands are much more numerous than in G. scinci- 

 cauda, being about fifteen on the back (between anterior and posterior 

 limbs) as against nine to ten in the latter. A similar pattern may also 

 be traced in the youngest specimen referred to (No. 18613) with a simi- 

 lar result, 



