Duméril (1853: 453) described _Elaphis deppei_ from a specimen in the Leiden Museum from "Mexico." This specimen, according to the type description, has 233 ventrals and 67 caudals. In 1863 Jan described _Pituophis deppei_ var. _pholidostictus_, also with "Mexico" as the type locality. Subsequent authors (see synonymy of _P. deppei deppei_ in Stull, 1940: 25) have treated _pholidostictus_ as a synonym of _deppei_. Smith and Taylor (1950: 334) restricted the type localities of _deppei_ and _pholidostictus_ to San Juan Teotihuacán, México. Cope (1860: 369) described _Arizona jani_ on the basis of a specimen in the United States National Museum from Buena Vista, Coahuila. Stull (1932: 2, 1940: 42), Smith (1944: 145) and Smith and Taylor (1945: 107) considered _jani_ as a northern subspecies of _Pituophis deppei_. _Arizona lineaticollis_ was described by Cope (1861: 300); the type, which originally was in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and is now lost, was said to have come from Jalapa, Veracruz. This locality probably is in error. Smith (1943: 460) placed _lineaticollis_ as a southern subspecies of _deppei_. Schmidt and Shannon (1947: 79) described _Pituophis deppei brevilineata_ on the basis of five specimens from Tancítaro, Michoacán, and Stuart (1954: 172) described _Pituophis deppei gibsoni_ from seven specimens from Departamento Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Thus, at present five subspecies of _Pituophis deppei_ are recognized. CHARACTERS STUDIED Snakes currently assigned to _Pituophis deppei_ differ from other members of the genus by possessing two instead of four prefrontal plates. The subspecies of _P. deppei_ have been defined on characters of coloration and scutellation. _Scutellation._--The only scale characters utilized in the present study are the numbers of ventrals and caudals. The number of ventrals varies in the total sample from 210 to 246 (Table 1); usually the variation in one locality is no more than 15. Number of caudals varies from 52 to 72. There is slight sexual dimorphism in the number of ventrals and somewhat greater differences in the number of caudals. TABLE 1.--Variation in the Numbers of Ventrals and Caudals in Four Subspecies of Pituophis.