1898.] VAX DENBURGH — •HERPETOLOGICAL NOTES. 139 



beneath bitumen-bearing rocks as a most conclusive and unexpected 

 support to the validity of the views that I have herein set forth. I 

 therefore, with this argument, for the present leave the subject. 



Note. — I have quoted thus fully from Dr. T. Sterry Hunt for 

 two reasons ; with all his eccentricities, he was a man of untiring 

 industry and a profound interpreter of the phenomena of nature in 

 the light of experiment. Therefore, no writer of recent years has 

 expressed views that are entitled to more respectful consideration. 

 He is also more widely quoted by both American and European 

 writers upon the subject of the origin of bitumens, especially as an 

 exponent of the doctrine that bitumens are indigenous to the rocks 

 in which they are found, than any other author. 



HERPETOLOGICAL NOTES. 



BY JOHN VAX DEXBUROH. 



{Read April 1, 1898.) 



1. Biifo boreas in Alaska. — In the winter of 1896, Mr. A. W. 

 Greeley, a student at Leland Stanford Junior University, gave me 

 for examination two toads which he had '' taken swimming in a 

 large lake near Prince William's sound, Alaska, July 15, 1896." 

 These are typical specimens of Bufo boreas^ distinguishable at a 

 glance from Bufo halophilus, and its northern form B. h. coIu7nbi- 

 ensts. Unless my memory fails me, no toad has heretofore been 

 recorded as Alaskan, and these specimens are, therefore, of great 

 interest, since they greatly extend to the northward the known 

 range of this family, genus and species upon the Pacific coast/ One 

 of these specimens contains eggs which must have been nearly 

 ready for laying. 



2. On the Time of Laying of the Western Gopher Snake in Cen- 

 tral Calif oi'nia.—Y.2s\y in the month of July, 1897, I received a 

 fine, moderately large specimen of the Western Gopher Snake {Pitu- 

 ophis catenifer), which had been captured a few days before ''in a 

 marsh near Palo Alto," Santa Clara county, Cal. During the next 

 few days this snake lay almost motionless in a small box in my 

 office in the California Academy of Sciences. On the afternoon of 



^ Toads have been reported from Gt. Bear Lake. 



