206 Streckei — Notes on Life History of Scaphiopus couchii Baird. 



separated from the female utters low plaintive cries and grasps 

 aimlessly at any object that is presented to him. I kept a 

 mated pair and four extra males confined in a fish bucket for a 

 short time and was compelled to separate them, as the latter 

 would persist in grasping the hind legs of the other male and 

 it was a difficult matter to get them to relinquish their hold. 



The number of specimens that make their appearance within 

 the limits of the city of Waco is simply enormous. In a vacant 

 lot across the street from my house I captured twenty-two exam- 

 ples between twilight and dark, and to judge from the sounds 

 made by those that were left it seemed as though the number was 

 scarcely diminished. In a horse-lot across the alley from this 

 place there must have been at least a couple of dozen more. In 

 a section of the city twelve blocks long by three blocks wide 

 there are at least twenty-five places where spadefoot toads 

 congregate in numbers. The next morning after an unusually 

 heavy rain hundreds of strings of eggs will be found in these 

 places. None of these eggs ever hatch but are dried up in the 

 course of the next twenty-four hours. 



in East Waco and on the flats west of the city, however, 

 there are low places where the water stands for a couple of 

 months or more and in these ponds young spadefoot toads are 

 reared by the thousands. 



In concluding this paper I desire to thank Dr. Leonard 

 Stejneger, United States National Museum; Dr. John Van 

 Demburgh, California Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Seth 

 Eugene Meek, Field Museum of Natural History, for their 

 kindness in furnishing me with lists of the localities from which 

 their respective institutions have received specimens of Scaphi- 

 opus couchii. 



All of the other notes are original and all descriptions of 

 young and adult specimens arc based on examples preserved in 

 the Museum of Baylor University. 



There is a wide field open to the student of Batrachology, and 

 as a large per cent of our most interesting forms inhabit sections 

 of the country far removed from the great museums and labora- 

 tories it remains for local observers to supply what information 

 they can in regard to the life histories of those forms of which 

 we as yet know little or nothing. 



