proceedings: biological society 411 



Mr. Bailey's communication was illustrated by lantern slides from 

 photographs of living animals and of their work. Messrs. Cooke, Wil- 

 cox, Howard and others took part in the discussion. 



The 541st meeting of the Society was held in the Assembly Hall 

 of the Cosmos Club, Saurday, May 1, 1915, with Vice-President Rose 

 in the chair and 26 persons present. 



On recommendation of the council. Admiral G. W. Baird was elected 

 to active membership. 



Under the heading of Brief Notes and Exhibition of Specimens, Dr. 

 O. P. Hay made remarks on the extinct ground sloths of America and 

 called attention to the existence of a specimen of N othr other ium from 

 North American Pleistocene, in Baylor University, Texas. Wm. Pal- 

 mer announced that he had lately seen an apparently wild specimen of 

 the European skylark in nearby Virginia. He also exhibited the jaws 

 of a ray, R.hinoptera honasus, collected at Chesapeake Beach, Mary- 

 land. E. W. Nelson called attention to the newspaper notoriety at- 

 tained by the San x^ntonio (Texas) bat roost erected under the miscon- 

 ception that bats were destructive to mosquitoes. He said there was no 

 evidence that the species of bats (Nyctinomiis mexicanus) in these roosts 

 consumed mosquitoes, and that they foraged so far from these roosts 

 that there would be little likelihood of their consuming insects in the 

 vicinity of San Antonio. 



The first communication of the regular program was by C. W. Gil- 

 more, Observations on new dinosaurian reptiles. The speaker discussed 

 briefly some of the more important discoveries of dinosaurian fossils 

 made in North America during the past two or three years, referring 

 especially to the explorations conducted by the American Museum of 

 Natural History and Canadian Geological Survey in the Edmonton 

 and Belly River formations in the province of Alberta, Canada. He 

 stated that the recent finding of several specimens, with which were 

 preserved impressions of considerable parts of the epidermal covering, 

 leads us to hope that the time is not far distant when the external ap- 

 pearance of these animals will be as well known as the internal skeleton. 



Lantern slides of many of the more striking specimens were shown, 

 the speaker confining himself to brief explanatory remarks regarding 

 their systematic position and their more striking characteristics. The 

 following forms were discussed: Saurolophus and Corthyosaurus of the 

 trachodont dinosaurs; Ankylosaurus, an armored reptile; M onodoniiis , 

 Anchiceratops, Ceratops, Styracosaurus , and Brachyceratops, all of the 

 Ceratopsia or horned dinosaurs. In conclusion, life restorations of 

 Brachyceratops, Thescelosaurus, and Stegosaurus, modelled by the 

 speaker, were exhibited for the first time. (Author's abstract.) 



Mr. Gilmore's communication was discus^sed by Messrs. O. P. Hay, 

 Nelson, and Lyon. 



The second paper was by William Palmer, The basic facts of bird 

 coloration. The complex and varied coloration of birds was explained 

 as due to several causes which were grouped as pigmental, structural, 



