OSTEOLOGY OF EREMOPHILA ALPESTRIS. 
By R. W. SHUFELDT, M. D. 
Captain, Medical Depariment, United States Army. 
The 11th of March, 1880, was a particularly severe day at Fort Fetter- 
man. A violent wind and snow storm prevailed during the 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 sheltered 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- 
ple manceuvres afforded me abundant opportunity to secure many speci- 
mens, and several hundred were taken. As they afterwards lay upon 
the table in my study, one would almost have said, before submitting 
them to careful scrutiny and examination, that not only was true alpes- 
tris represented, but both the varieties, lewcolema and chrysolama, 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 have never seen the black 
pectoral crescent of this bird in the low position in which Audubon rep- 
resents it in his work (B. Am., Vol. VIII, pl. 497), where he figures his 
Alauda rufa, the Western Shore Lark. 
Before proceeding to the study of the skeleton of this interesting 
species, we will remind the reader that of all the genera that go to make 
up the family Alaudide, or Larks, but few species have fallen to the lot 
ot our North American avi-fauna. We have the Sky Lark, Alauda ar- 
vensis,” and thesubject of the present monograph, with its two varieties, 
Li. alpestris leucolema and chrysolema, mentioned above. 
The Skull— (PLIV, Figs. 22, 25, and 26).—It is a striking characteristic 
in the skulls of nearly all adult birds that certain bones. become firmly 
united, their sutures entirely disappearing ; perhaps in no species ot the 
highly organized suborder Oscines has this almost universal avian feature 
been so thoroughly carried out as in our present subject, the Horned 
Lark. Occasionally we do find, however, a trace to guide us in locating 
the original boundaries of the primitive "elements, e even among the Os. 
cines, as the sutures, amidst the parietals and frontals in the cranium of 
Lanius, when maceration is carried to a high degree, but in Hremophila, 
Wyoming Territory, United States, lat. 42° 23’ 35” N., long. 105° 21’ 4” W. 
2 Alauda arvensis, Linn.—Cf. Dresser & Sharpe, Barges Eur., pt.—, and B. B. & R. 
Hist. N. Am. B., ii. 1874, 136 (Greenland and Bermuda), and Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 
21, p. 293, and Coues’ Check-list of N. A. B., 2nd ed,, 1882, p. 33, No. 85. is 
27 
