382 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vor. 48 
two great swampy wastes, the Everglades and the Okefenokee, 
remain undrained, the great American reptile is not likely to become 
entirely extinct. 
One. of the first things to be determined, of course, in the collec- 
tion of embryological material is the time at which the eggs are laid. 
Judging from the statements of native hunters the laying season of 
the alligator might be thought to be at any time from January to 
September. As a matter of fact the month of June is the time when 
most, if not all, of the eggs are laid. S. F. Clarke gives June 9th 
and June 17th as the limits of the laying season in Florida, but I 
found at least one nest in which eggs were laid as late as June 26th: 
no eggs were found before the first date given by Clarke. It seemed 
quite certain that the laying, during the season in question, had been 
delayed by an extreme drought that had dried up the smaller swamps 
and reduced the alligator holes to mere puddles. Nests were found 
in considerable numbers as éarly as June 8th, but no eggs were laid 
in any of them until the end of the dry period which occurred nearly 
two weeks later. Almost immediately after the occurrence of the 
rains that filled up the swamps eggs were deposited in all of the 
nests at about the same time. From the fact that all of these com- 
pleted nests had stood for so long a time without eggs, and from 
the fact that all of the eggs from these nests contained embryos in 
a well advanced state of development, it seemed evident that the 
egg-laying had been delayed by the unusually dry weather. Eggs 
taken directly from the oviducts of an alligator that was killed at 
this time also contained embryos that had already passed through 
the earlier stages of development. Thus it was that the earliest 
stages of development were not obtained during this summer. 
It is said that during the mating season, which precedes by some 
time, of course, the laying season, the males are noisy and quarrel- 
some, and that they exhibit sexual characteristics of color by which 
they may be distinguished from the females. Never having been 
in the alligator country at this season, the writer has made no per- 
sonal observations along these lines, but from the frequency with 
which alligators with mutilated or missing members are found it 
is evident that fierce encounters must sometimes take place, what- 
ever the cause. During June and July, at least, and, probably, 
during most of the year the alligators are very silent, an occasional 
bellow during the very early morning hours being the only audible 
evidence that one has that the big reptiles are in the neighborhood. 
Whatever may be the sexual differences during the mating season, 
at ordinary times the two sexes are so much alike that I have, on 
