Recently, Dr. Hobart M. Smith (1943) has reviewed the status of the longitudinally-striped California king snake, and has reached the conclusion that it is specifically distinct from the form, although occasionally hybridizing with it. Thus he advocates a return to the nomenclature of Blanchard, Van Denburgh, and others, who referred to the striped snake as Lampropeltis californiae, and to the form as L. getulus boylii. I have previously presented some data (1936, 1939), particularly on broods hatched in captivity, that appear to me to prove that these two forms are only pattern phases of a single subspecies, which should be called L. getulus californiae. I should say at once that the older arrangement has the advantage of nomenclatorial simplicity. For if we consider the two forms, as they occur in San Diego County, to be pattern phases of a single species, how are we to designate the form in those areas wherein the striped alternative is never found? Shall we consider it subspecifically distinct from the San Diego County snakes, based, not on any external character, but merely on its failure to produce pattern dimorphism? Yet in spite of the nomenclatorial clarity involved in Dr. Smith's proposal, I feel that his is not the correct interpretation. I think he has given inadequate weight to two important criteria, and I therefore renew the discussion. It is opportune also to present the statistics of the broods hatched in 1940-42. For simplicity in these comments I shall follow Dr. Smith in grouping the aberrants, which I previously called black ventrums and broken stripes, with the striped phase, thus considering only the striped and ringed snakes, which I shall now call mixtures, as true aberrants. I readily admit that there is no sharp line 'between any of these pattern phases, for borderline cases occur between any two; however, I think the geneticist will be concerned with the female sex-linkage evident in the black ventrums, which suggests that they are as truly aberrant as the predominantly male mixtures. My first criticism of Dr. Smith's argument has to do with his statement that free interbreeding of the boylii and californiae phases does not occur, else the hybrids would occur in a much greater proportion. Obviously there is very nearly complete physiological isolation of the two types where they occur together in the nearest approach to the pure state. This, it seems to me, places too much stress on the rarity of mixtures among the broods (and also in the wild population) and not enough on the mixed brood to be one divergent composition of the broods. If we consider a mixed brood to be one that contains any young differing in pattern from the mother (using Dr. Smith's simplified classification, which recognizes only three patterns instead of my five, i.e., ringed, striped, and mixtures) we have the following classification of broods up to and including 1939: 85