May, 1893 



REPTILES OF THE DEATH VALLEY EXPEDITION. 



211 



this proviso I shall designate the forms which I have recognized among 

 the material of the Death Valley Expedition by binomiuals. 



Whether the form called Butainia infernalis by Baird and Girard, and 

 later by Prof. Cope, really is the same as Blainville's Coluber infernalis 

 is to me a question which even Boconrt's recent paper (Bnll. Soc. Zool. 



France, xvn, Jan. 



20, 1S92, p. 40) fails to settle, because he evidently 



includes several forms which we on this side of the Atlantic would not 

 think of uniting. As the four specimens before me (Nos. 18711-18714) 

 agree with the specimens which are usually called E. infernalis, I have 

 adopted this term for the present. 



Two of these specimens have nineteen scale-rows and eight supra- 

 labials (Nos. 18711, 18712), and all are uniform dark above with three 

 well-defined buff-colored bands. No. 18711, the larger specimen, has 

 the supralabials well bordered with blackish, while in No. 18712 these 

 marks are obsolete. The latter is somewhat abnormal in having the 

 second row of temporals fused together. The two specimens from Morro 

 (Nos. 18713-18714), on the other hand, have twenty-one scale-rows and- 

 the labials (eight) well bordered with black. 



List of specimens of Thamnophis infernalis. 



U.S. 

 Nat. 

 Mus. 

 No. 



Sex and 

 age. 



Locality. 



Alti- 

 tude. 



Date. 



Collector. 



Remarks. 



18711 



18712 



ad. 



San Joaquin River, High Sierra. Calif- 



Feet. 



8,100 



July 29 

 Oct. 5 



Nelson 



Bailef 



Nelson 



do .. .. 



Near Mam- 

 moth Pass. 



18713 







Nov. 10 



fin 





187U 





















Thamnophis elegans (B. & G.). 



Of the three specimens which I refer to this species, the large one 

 (No. 18708) is strikingly like the type of Baird and Girard. The num- 

 ber of scale-rows, however, is only nineteen, as in Baird and Girard's 

 second specimen. The eye is somewhat larger, and the posterior 

 supralabials lower, but in both respects it agrees closely with No. 878, 

 from Fort Beading, Calif., which has always been referred to T. elegans 

 without hesitation. In the two younger specimens, from Mount Whit- 

 ney (Nos. 18709 and 18710), the general color is slightly more olive, 

 not quite so bluish, and the labials are margined with blackish, in this 

 respect resembling No. 878, referred to above. I do not believe that 

 too much stress should be laid upon the absence or presence of these 

 marks in this and allied forms. But instead of having the space be- 

 tween the dorsal aud lateral stripes uniform dark, as in the larger 

 specimen, these younger ones are distinctly spotted on a rather dark 

 ground, quite resembling the subspecies recently described by Cope as 

 7'. elegans lineolata. An examination of No. 878, however, establishes 

 the fact that the dorsal spots are present and that consequently the 



