Note 194 — {153} CHAPTER IX
Reading edition
Coluber flaviventris.—Olivaceous, beneath yellow; inferior jaw beneath white; scales destitute of carina.
Description. Body above, olivaceous; tinged with brown on the vertebræ; scales impunctured at tip, posterior edges and basal edge black; skin black, beneath yellow, rather paler behind; inferior jaw beneath white to the origin of the plates; head with nine plates above, two longitudinal series, of about four large scales each, intervening on each side between the two posterior plates and the three posterior supermaxillary plates; intermaxillary plate somewhat heptagonal, dilated, emarginate at the mouth, superior angle obtusely pointed; eye black-brown, pupil deep black, surrounded by a whitish line, posterior canthus with two plates.
Plates 176, scales 84
Plates 174, scales —
ft. in.
Total length 3 4½
Tail 85⁄8
Head, to the tip of the maxillary bones 13⁄20
Another specimen, plates 130, scales 91.
Total length 3 113⁄8
Tail 11½
Three specimens were found. The inferior surface of one was immaculate, but that of the smaller one had on each side of the plates an obsolete double series of reddish-brown spots, irregularly alternate on each side; these were so indistinct as not to be noticed at the first glance of the eye. The tip of the tail in this last is deficient.
2. Coluber parietalis.—Above blackish, with three yellowish fillets, and about eighty red concealed spots; beneath bluish; a series of black dots each side.
Description. Body above black-brown, a vertebral greenish yellow vitta, and a lateral pale yellow one, beneath which is a fuliginous shade; between the dorsal and lateral vitta are about eighty concealed red spots or semifasciæ, formed upon the skin and lateral margins of the scales, obsolete towards the cloaca, at which the series terminates; scales elongated, all carinate, and slightly reflexed at the lateral edges; head dark olive, beneath white, parietal plates with a double white spot at the middle of the suture; intermaxillary plate subhexagonal, emarginate at the mouth, and at tip hardly angulated, almost rounded in that part, transverse diameter nearly double the longitudinal; superior maxillary plates white, intermediate sutures blackish; eye yellowish, pupil black, posterior canthus two-scaled, beneath bluish green, a longitudinal series of black dots each side at the base of the scuta, terminating at the cloaca.
Plates 165, scales 88.
ft. in.
Total length 1 33⁄10
Tail 49⁄10
This is a common serpent in this section of country. In order to render the lateral red spots very apparent, it is necessary to dilate the skin, when they exhibit a very striking character, being of a vermilion red. It varies in having the lateral series of red spots alternating with a series of smaller red spots nearer to the dorsal line.
In common with ordinatus it has a double common white spot on the parietal plates, and a series of black spots on each side of the interior surface of the body; but in addition to the proportions of plates, and scales, and length of tail, the red colour of the lateral concealed spots very sufficiently denotes its specific dissimilarity from that most common of the serpents of the United States.
3. Coluber proximus.—Body above black, trilineate, vertebral line ocraceous, lateral one yellowish, a double white spot on the parietal plates.
Description. Body above black, with three vittæ; vertebral vitta ocraceous, occupying the dorsal series of scales and a moiety of each one of the second series each side; lateral vitta greenish-yellow, occupying more than the moiety of the seven and eight series of scales: beneath the lateral vitta the black is tinged with greenish-blue; head with seven olivaceous plates above; parietal ones with a double, white, longitudinal spot: intermaxillary plate pentangular, the superior termination obtusely rounded; posterior canthus of the eye three-scaled, of which the two inferior ones are white; anterior canthus white; supermaxillary plates bluish-green; maxillary angles with a small black dot; inferior maxilla white beneath; beneath pale greenish-blue.
Plates 178, scales 86.
Total length 2 ft. 7¼ in.
Tail 7¾ in.
Resembles Coluber saurita, ordinatus and parietalis. Numerous longitudinal, abbreviated white lines, may be observed by dilating the black portion of the skin as in ordinatus; these lines or spots are obsolete upon the neck and upon the posterior portion of the body. The extreme tip of the tail is wanting in this specimen.
It differs from saurita in the numerical proportion which its subcaudal scales bear to its plates; from ordinatus it may be distinguished by being destitute of the two series of black points beneath; it is a much more slender serpent than parietalis, and the tail is proportionally longer.—James.