OCR Text |
Show 1869.] MR. G. KREFFT ON NEW AUSTRALIAN SNAKES. 319 dividing the head from the neck. This collar commences at the last labial shield, covers five scales in length by one (or at the angle two scales) wide ; it then crosses the neck, the width of a scale or less, and joins the opposite angle. The shields on the side of the face are all more or less spotted with white, including the outer edges of the superciliaries, the rostral, and the first pair of frontals. The general colour of the body covers the outer margin of every abdominal plate, rather jagged and irregular in tbe middle, but sharply defined on the sides, particularly in young individuals; the inner margins of the two-rowed subcaudals are marked in the same way to the tip. The abdominal plates are otherwise of a clear straw-yellow, brighter in young individuals. The outer margin of each scale of the back is darkly shaded, with a light elongate spot in the middle, giving the body a keeled appearance. Hab. Mr. George Masters discovered this handsome little Snake at the Pine-Mountain, near Ipswich, Queensland, and states that it can be freely handled without offering to bite. CACOPHIS HARRIETT.**. (Fig. 3.) Scales in 15 rows. Abdominal plates 193. Two anal plates. Subcaudals 35/35, or more. Total length 12 inches, head |, tail 1|. Fig. 3. Cacophis harriettce. Body rather elongate and rounded; head scarcely distinct from trunk, quadrangular, not much depressed; tail rather short and stout, distinct from the body. The vertical is rounded off behind, about as large again as the superciliaries; the occipitals are rather small and narrow, not much larger than the vertical (too large in my figure). The plates on the side of the face are similar to those of C. fordei; the third and fourth upper labia's come under the eye, and the sixth and last is the largest; the temporal shields are one large one and two others of unequal size behind. The general colour is a kind of purplish brown above, each scale with a white central streak (except the outer row on each side), forming thirteen thin lines from nape to base of tail; head and neck white above, with a central spot (the colour of the body) covering part of posterior frontals, vertical superciliaries, and occipitals, and one row of scales surrounding the occipitals. The shields on the side of the face, the lower labials, and chin-shields are dark-spotted and blotched; eye small, pupil rounded. Abdominal plates uniform purplish brown, with a light outer edge ; subcaudals with similar markings. |