4 University of Michigan 



synonymy of the creature. It was Crocodilus aciirus. 



Messrs. C. E. Jackson and W. T. Hornaday killed the 

 next crocodiles on an old slide on the shores of Arch Creek, 

 in Dake County, in 1875 : a giant male, 15 feet 2 inches, with 

 half a foot of the tail gone, and a perfect female, 10 feet 8 

 inches. These Avere killed on successive days on the same 

 slide and were well cared for. The male still ornaments the 

 United States National ^Museum in Washington, which, I 

 helieve, likewise secured the skeleton of the female. Horna- 

 day found another skull of a dead individual which is, beyond 

 doubt, the one now in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 

 received from Ward and labeled Biscayne Bay. In the 

 account of the hunt which Hornaday published in 1S75 (Amer. 

 Naturl., 9, p. 504) we have the first attempt to give some gen- 

 eral account of habits, abundance and distribution. Hornaday 

 speaks of Wyman's having described a skull from Florida and 

 called it C. acufits, but not being familiar with the variation 

 within the species, Hornaday was constrained to describe his 

 specimens as representing a new species, Crocodilus Horidanus. 

 The various specimens which are still preserved are cotypes 

 of this name, no special type having been designated. More 

 material now has shown that there is no diagnostic differen- 

 tiation of Florida individuals and the name has neither spe- 

 cific nor sub-specitic value. 



Curiously enough, in later years Hornaday evidently for- 

 got the Wyman notes, for in the American Natural History 

 (1904, p. 320) we read: **The presence of a true crocodile 

 in Florida was not discovered until 1875, when a pair of speci- 

 mens of large size were collected in Arch Creek, at the head 

 of Biscayne Bay, by Mr. C. E. Jackson and the writer." Very 

 probably the fact that Hornaday believed that two species 

 were involved may have led him, in error, to conclude that 



