1070 The American Naturalist [December, 
appeared. This is distinctively a southern form, extending west 
to central Oklahoma. 
The dorsal saddles are so far extended in the next subspecies, 
parallelus, as to form two parallel stripes with a narrow strip of 
ground color between, on the middle line of the abdomen. 
The alternating spots have disappeared. In the specimen fig- 
ured, which is from Florida, and is in the U. S. National 
Museum, the supraocular spots seen in temporalis, are indica- 
ted. The ground color is red. Black begins to appear on the 
head. 
From the form syspilus two types of color modification may 
be traced. One of these brings the borders of the saddle spots 
together on the median line, forming a median black stripe; 
this is the subspecies annulatus, which belongs to western 
Texas and the adjacent parts of Mexico. The top of the head 
is black (fig. 9). In the other, the lateral borders of the saddle 
spots have disappeared altogether, so that the body is more or 
less completely encircled by pairs of black rings, the alternat- 
ing spots having disappeared. This might be supposed to 
have resulted from a continuation of the process by which the 
alternating spots have disappeared, and the edges of the sad- 
dles been brought closer and closer together. The continued 
transverse extension of the spot color would finally obliterate 
the lateral borders completely, as actually occurs in this last 
form, the coccineus of authors, which is the common type of 
the Gulf Coast. But the black has not covered the head and 
muzzle of this form as in the annulatus. These regions are on 
the contrary red, as is the spot color generally, while the 
ground color is pale yellow. 
A tendency to a development of black pigment in the sad- 
dle spots is seen in two other forms. The subspecies gentilis 
resembles annulatus, but has a black longitudinal dorsal 
band which divides each saddle spot in two equal halves. 
This is a rare form, only known from the Indian Territory. 
The common Mexican form (polyzonus) has the paired rings of 
coccineus, the black head of annulatus, but each scale of the red 
intervals is tipped with black. 
