636 SCIENTIFIC EECORD FOR 1884. 



the uarae of Bull or Pine snake {Pityopliis mclannleucvs) is notorious on 

 account of the sounds it emits. This was described by the old natural- 

 ist of Philadelphia, William Bartram, as " a terrible hiss, resembling- 

 distant thunder," but there are few who have heard it who would not 

 regard such a description as very much exaggerated. By Dr. Charles 

 A. White, the hiss of the bull-snake is described as having "a peculiar 

 hoarseness which is sometimes so loud that, with the help of tbe imagi- 

 nation, it appears to have suggested a likeness to the low rumbling 

 bellow of the bull," and in reference to this similarity the serpent owes 

 one of its names. Dr. White has inquired how the sound is produced. 

 He found that it is due to the character and posture of the epiglottis. 

 This organ is absent, or represented only by a tubercle, in all other ser- 

 pents which he had seen: in the bull-snake it is "a thin, erect, flexi- 

 ble, flag-shaped or curved spatulate body, situated upon the median 

 line immediately in front of the riraa-glottidis, and with its free end 

 directed upward and backward, its posterior edge curving partly over 

 the rima. It is evidently this epiglottis that i^roduces the hoarseness 

 of the hissing sound, which it accomplishes by dividing, and fluttering 

 in the strong current of air which is forced from the lung out of the 

 rima." {Am. Nat., xviii, 19-21.) 



Birds. 



Coues' Key to North American Birds. — One of the most important 

 books on ornithology published during the past year is the second edi- 

 tion of Coues' " Key to North American Birds," and, in the words of 

 one of the most distinguished of European ornithologists, it is "one of 

 the best and most useful bird-books ever written." The first edition of 

 this well-known work was issued in 1872, and the changes have been so 

 great as to necessitate a thorough revision and recasting of the work. 

 Indeed, the so-called second edition is really a new work, for very little 

 of the old is retained unchanged; to it are added the "Field Ornithol- 

 ogy," formerly published as a separate work, and above all a most 

 important introduction on the anatomy of birds in general, in which 

 the osteology, neurology, angeiology, pneumatology, splanchnology, and 

 oology are successively considered. In the words of the European 

 ornithologist, already quoted, " So much information that cannot be got 

 at elsewhere is brought together in this comprehensive treatise, that it 

 ought to be in the hands of every ornithologist, whether he is a special 

 student of the American avifauna or not." 



Baird, Brewer, and Bidgicay^s Water-Birds of North America. — The 

 great work on North American Water-Birds, whose completion has been 

 so long and eagerly looked for, has at length been finished. The three 

 volumes on the Land-Birds were published about ten years ago (in 1874) 



