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Show 350 DR. U. OADOW ON EVOLUTION [Mar. 20, breaking up into spots in the adult male." Further, there are two varieties of this lizard :-" I. With rows of light spots in the female; in the male the stripes break up into round spots; known from Colima and from Coban in Guatemala." [These I distinguish as C. communis copei.-H. G.] " II. N o spots, and the bands are unbroken, resembling the young of var. I." Such are said to be known from Guadalajara, Cordova, Guatemala, San Antonio. Which of the various places called Cordova and San Antonio are meant, is left to our imagination. There is a San Antonio in Western Yucatan ; but Cope became very vague about his G. communis, as shown by the fact that in Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 1885, p. 379, he returned this kind as from Matamoros, and from S. Antonio in Texas ! Concerning this second variety, its definition is too vague ; the indifferent characters apply to the young of almost any C. gularis in the widest sense; but Cope at that time thought that the possession of a frenocular plate was a distinctive character of his G. communis. H e partly amended this in his paper in Proc. A m . Phil. Soc. xxiii. 1886, p. 283, where he managed to describe the various evolutionary stages and individual variations of the true C. gularis as 4 subspecies, and those of his future C. scalaris as 2 subspecies. This, again, he has partly amended in his posthumous work. The synonymy has consequently become rather intricate. In Trans. A m . Phil. Soc. xvii. 1893. p. 47, it is stated that C. communis, from Colima, " reaches a larger size than any others of the C. gularis, and its peculiar coloration of small (or sometimes large) yellow spots on a dark olive ground gives it a very distinct appearance." Lastly, in Cope's key of his subspecies of C. gularis, p. 601 in his posthumous work, C. g. communis, from "South-western Mexico," is diagnosed as follows :-" Stripes broken up into rows of spots; interspaces with yellow spots ; hind legs with or without yellow spots ; no posterior femoral stripe ; a frenorbital ; 5 or 6 'infra-labials ; large." I have examined the following few specimens, which I refer to as C. communis copei, since they seem to conform most completely with Cope's types. One specimen from Colima (text-fig. 78 E).-Throat white ; scales of the large collar with bluish bases. Part of under parts blue, with white edges to the scales. Tail blue all round. (!round-colour above blue-grey, without any black bars or black spots. There are remnants of six faint stripes, each broken up into a row of white spots, and there is one row of whitish spots in each field. Total number of rows of spots about 12. Thighs above and behind, and root of tail, with smaller spots. One specimen from San Domingo, Isthmus.-With many small, rather irregular yellow spots on the root of the tail, thighs, rump, and lower back. Further forwards these pale spots disappear and faint dark spots appear in the dark brown fields, together with traces of the vanishing stripes 1 and 2. The region of the |