Art. v.— Osteology of £reinophila alpestris. 



By R. Tl^. Slitifeldt, Actiiig^ Assistant Surgeon United States 



Army. 



The lltli of Marcli, 1880, was a particularly severe day at Fort Fetter- 

 man.* A violent wind and snow storm prevailed durinjir tlie entire 

 twenty-four hours. In the creek bottom, below the fort, where the wind 

 had exposed the ground of some land that had been used for gardening 

 purposes the year before, thousands of Horned Larks congregated. 

 They seemed disinclined to vacate their partially c^heltered position, pre- 

 ferring to face the few death-dealing fires I delivered them rather than 

 be tossed over the prairie by the freezing storm. At each shot, the flocks 

 arose, skimmed low over the ground, soon to alight again. These sim- 

 l)le manoeuvres afforded me abundant opportunity to secure many speci- 

 mens, and several hundred were taken. As they afterwards lay ujion 

 the table in my study, one would almost have said, before submitting 

 them to careful scrutiny and examination, that not only was true «(/;es- 

 tris represented, but both the varieties, leucolcema and cJirysolccma, de- 

 scribed by modern writers. Certainly it was that there were many 

 shades of their normal coloring among them, accompanied by differ- 

 ences in size that were not due to sex. I feel sure my reader will par- 

 don the liberty I take in adding to an article upon the osteology of this 

 interesting bird a life-size portrait of it, selected from the large number 

 before me on the occasion referred to. The hind claw in this individual 

 (PI. IV, Fig. 22) was longer and straighter than any of the others ex- 

 amined by me, but this member, as well as the areas of the different col- 

 ors of its i)lumage, are, in my representation, the results of carefiil meas- 

 urements and comparison. Ihave never seen theblack pectoral crescent 

 of this bird in the low position in which Audubon represents it in his 

 work (B. Am., VIII, Xo. 100, PI. 497), where he figures his Alauda 

 riifa, the Western Shore Lark. The bird figured in my plate was taken 

 in that section of our country where the variety leucola'ma is usually 

 found breeding during the season, and probably belongs to series de- 

 scribed as such, but certainly has attained a style and brilliancy of col- 

 oring that brings it very near to true alpestris, its size excluding it from 

 the variety chrysolccma. Interesting and important as tliis i):n-t of the 

 subject is in the life history of this bird, we nnist, with these few re- 



* Wyoming Territory, United States, lat. 42= 23' 35" N., Ions- lOo^ 21' 4" W. 



119 



