40 
AUSTRALIAN SNAKES. 
uniformly dark (rather bluish) grey, and much lighter anteriorly; in others 
all the plates are clouded with bluish black, occasionally formed into blotches, 
and leaving irregular yellowish portions in the middle of each plate. The 
body scales on hack and sides are dark throughout, those only on the anterior 
half of the body shewing a margin with a black dot at the tip of each scale. 
The few specimens in the Museum collection present a variation in 
color, sufficiently great to have warranted the creation of a new species, 
but after all they are probably the same snakes which Dr. Gray had under 
consideration when describing I), olivacea. 
The British Museum examples are from North-east Australia and 
Port Essington; those in the Australian Museum, from Port Denison. 
Grey Snake. Diemenia reticulata. 
(Plate XII, fig. 10.) 
Diemenia reticulata, Gray, Zool. Misc., p. 54. Gntlir., Cat. of Colubr. Snakes in Col. 
B. M., p. 212. 
Elapa psammophis, Schlegel, Ess. II, p. 455, and Albildg., t. 46, f. 14. 
Scales in 15 rows. 
Two anal plates. 
Abdominals, 177. 
Subcaudals, 85/85. 
Total length, 30 inches. 
Head, inch. 
Tail, 6 inches. 
The coloration is uniformly grey above and greenish below, the 
central part of the ventrals being conspicuously marked with green; tips 
of scales and skin between them black; end of tail, salmon-colored, a 
yellowish dark-edged streak crossing the rostral shield. The eye is 
encircled first by a black and then by a yellowish line, both ending in a 
point below the orbit. 
This species occurs in nearly every part of Australia, the extreme 
north and south excepted. It has been taken on the Murray and Darling, 
and specimens have come to hand from Brisbane, Port Curtis, and Rock¬ 
hampton. All these snakes differ no more from those of Sydney than 
they do from each other. Much dependence cannot be placed on coloration 
as a distinguishing characteristic between snakes. No two of them vary 
so much from each other as does the same snake before and after shedding 
its skin. The species under consideration is the most common in New 
