These localities are all in the Desert and San Diegan faunal areas. It was with much interest, therefore, that I found this snake in the Californian Fauna close to the edge of the Pacific Fauna. The specimen was secured near Los Gatos, Santa Clara County, several hundred miles beyond the range of the species as previously known. It was found under a pile of recently cut hay, at an altitude of about eight or nine hundred feet, in what is locally known as the warm belt of the foothills, where Bascanion laterale, Cnemidophorus tigris undulates, and Amphispiza belli also occur.
On the Shape of the Pupil in the Reptilian Genus Arizona
There has been, among herpetologists, much diversity of opinion as to the merits of Kennicott's genus Arizona. The validity of the single species for which he proposed the name Arizona elegans has, I believe, never been questioned, but the known generic characters have been rather inadequate. Accordingly, while some authors have followed Kennicott, others have referred the species variously to the genera Pituophis of Holbrook, Rhinechis of Michahelles, or Coluber of Linnæus.
I believe that all authors (myself included) who mention the point at all describe the eye of this snake as showing a round pupil. This is true of most alcoholic specimens, for in these the pupil usually is dilated. In two living specimens, however, I find that the pupil is slightly irregular in outline so that it appears somewhat eccentric, that it varies considerably in size from time to time, and that it is distinctly elliptic, with the long diameter vertical, but becomes nearly round when dilated. Some alcoholic specimens also show the pupil somewhat contracted and elliptic.
This point is of some importance, since the possession of a vertically elongate pupil is in itself ample basis for the recognition of the genus Arizona as distinct from the other colubrine genera with which it has been confused.
San Francisco, California,
February 24, 1906.
[1] Type.
[2] In fifty specimens the costal grooves are 17 in forty, 16 in six, and 18 in four.
[3] Type.