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Show 790 MR. G. A. BOULENGER O N T H E [June 20, the great orders of small and excessively active birds. The Passeriformes and Fringilliformes, with their allied orders, have an average temperature ranging from 42° to 44°. Setting forth these results in a descending series, we find that:- (1) The higher birds range about 43° C. (109°-4 F.). (2) The middle birds range about 41° C. (105°*8 F.). (3) The lowest birds range about 39° C. (102°-2 F.). But these observations in the Society's Gardens show that Apteryx, the lowest order of all, is still lower in temperature, being only about 38° (100° F.). The temperatures of the birds were all taken under uniform conditions, while the temperature of the air was between 55° and 63° F. And the result seems to bear out the contention, otherwise very probable, that the higher the bird in the zoological scale the higher in general is the temperature of its blood. 4. On the American Spade-foot (Scaphiopus solitarius Holbrook). By G. A. B O U L E N G E R , F.R.S. [Eeceived May 25, 1899.] (Plate ML) Eemarks recently made by Dr. T. Gill1 on the position of Scaphiopus m the family Pelobatidce have induced me to make a detailed examination of the typical species of this genus the osteological characters of which have uot been fully "described before. I was all the better prepared for this task, haying had an opportunity of keeping and observing some living specimens for which I am indebted to m y friend Mr. A. Pam. These have enabled m e to exhibit some figures of the animal carefully drawn and painted from life by Mr. P. Smit (see Plate LII .) the figures previously given by Holbrook and by Dumeril and Bibron being very unsatisfactory and taken from spirit-specimens. I had at mv command a good supply of the latter, as well as two prepared skeletons ; but of the eggs and larva nothing was at hand, nor did literature afford any information on this head. I had applied last summer to Messrs. Bnmley, in North Carolina, where the Spade-toot is abundant, who kindly informed me that the eggs are laid eav}y ^ll^'n firings resembling those of toads, but thicker aud with the vitelline spheres more irregularly disposed-in fact, as I infer, not unlike those of Pelobates. They added that the season was then too far advanced for tadpoles to be procured, as their development is comparatively rapid, and the pools in which they are reared dry up by the end of spring. I have therefore to postpone a description of the tadpole, which I hope, however to supply ere long. r ' 1 Science, (2) viii, 1898, p. 935. |
