790 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1144 



ened him sufficiently to have made other atti- 

 tude and action impossible. C. S. Ludlow 

 Army Medical Museum, 

 Washington, D. C, 

 September 29, 1916 



THE SONG OF FOWLER'S TOAD (BUFO 

 FOWLEEI PUTNAM.) 



In Science for September 29, Mr. H. A. 

 Allard states that for some years he has heard 

 at Clarendon, Va., two types of toad cries. 

 One was uttered early in the spring, " a steady, 

 trilling monotone," lasting " from 10 to 20 

 seconds," and " resembling the song of Bufo 

 americanus as it is heard in New England." 

 The other was that of Fowler's toad, "the 

 unmistakable, weird, wailing scream which ad- 

 vertises its presence throughout its range." 

 He further states that on May 2, 1916, he 

 caught toads uttering the former note, and 

 found them to be Bufo fowleri. He presented 

 them to the National Museum, where they are 

 under accession number 59692. 



Now I have collected for some years in the 

 region in question, as my home is in Alex- 

 andria, and I have found both B. fowleri and 

 B. americanus fairly common, although 

 fowleri seems the more abundant. I have 

 studied the breeding habits of these toads at 

 Haverford, Pa., where both occur very com- 

 monly and are quite distinct. 



Americanus is one of the first Anura to ap- 

 pear in the spring; fowleri one of the last. 

 Transformed americanus are sometimes met 

 with before fowleri begins to sing. The note 

 of fowleri there is always the short snoring 

 scream. The note of americanus is always 

 much longer, although its trill and its soft- 

 ness are somewhat dependent on whether the 

 toad is on land or in the water. I have col- 

 lected fowleri in numbers at Brevard, N. C, 

 at an altitude of 2,200 feet. The note there 

 was the same which I have heard at Alexandria 

 and at Haverford. 



Finally, during the first part of September, 

 I was working in the reptile and amphibian 

 department of the National Museum, and 

 while looking over the catalogue I chanced to 

 see there an entry of B. fowleri with the re- 

 mark that the note was that of B. americanus. 



My interest aroused by this and also by the 

 fact that they were local specimens, I looked 

 them up and examined them. I soon came to 

 the conclusion that they were not fowleri at 

 all, but americanus. They were much too 

 large for fowleri, and they had large warts 

 arranged singly in spots as in B. americanus, 

 instead of the small warts, three to five in a 

 spot as in B. fowleri. These toads were cata- 

 logue number 59692, and were collected by 

 Mr. Allard at Vinson Station, Va., on May 2, 

 1916. Mr. Allard was probably misled by the 

 fact that they did not have the deeply spotted 

 breast of most americanus, but this is not too 

 reliable a character, as some B. fowleri have 

 speckled breasts and some B. americanus have, 

 as in this instance, immaculate breasts. 



Thus there is no reason to believe that 

 Fowler's toad has two distinct notes, and con- 

 fidence can still be reposed in the calls of toads 

 and frogs as differentiating characters. 



E. E. Dunn 



Smith College, 

 Northampton, Mass. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Morphology of Invertebrate Types. By Alex- 

 ander Petrunkevitch. The Macmillan 

 Company, New York. 1916. 

 Under this title Professor Petrunkevitch 

 offers us a laboratory guide for representa- 

 tive invertebrate types and, in addition, mate- 

 rial of the sort commonly found in our text- 

 books. " Each chapter consists of two parts : a 

 monograph in which a description is given of 

 the animal selected as representative of its 

 class and instructions for the students to fol- 

 low in dissection." The purpose of the former 

 is to give the student an account of the mor- 

 phology of his type form to which he may 

 refer throughout his dissection and to give 

 the teacher more freedom, since the lectures 

 are thus relieved of much detail. The book 

 is frankly morphological, as its name implies, 

 and the author makes no apology for this; but 

 rather contends in his preface that the student 

 who aspires to the work of experimental zool- 

 ogy is often hampered by " a superficial knowl- 

 edge of the structure, life and development of 

 those very animals which in his later studies 



