AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES OF BEXAR COUNTY 3 



scribers stand in dread — the synonymy. During his many years 

 of collecting, Marnock obtained a large number of specimens, 

 many of the rarer animals in series. He did some exchanging 

 but at the time of his death, less than fifteen per cent of his 

 collection was foreign material and most of this representing 

 generic groups not found in Texas. 



It was Marnock 's intention to publish his notes on the 

 herpetology of southwestern Texas but he delayed his purpose 

 until too late in life. According to some of his friends, his re- 

 lation to Helotes Creek was distinctly romantic. It seems that 

 when a young man, he had been a collector of specimens for 

 some of the British scientific institutions (he was an English- 

 man by birth) and it was in quest of material that he visited 

 southwestern Texas on his route to Central America. In his 

 wanderings, so the story goes, he chanced to visit Helotes Creek 

 and became so enamoured of the spot that he decided to spend 

 the balance of his life there. Later he married and reared a 

 family of several children. He died February 4, 1920, at the 

 age of eighty-four. The old stone house on the hill above the 

 ^reek bed is still occupied by his widow. In one of the upper 

 windows leans an old musket, relic of the days when horse- 

 thieves and other desperadoes made the life of the settler an 

 unenviable one and when it was always necessary to have the 

 means of defense near at hand. The locality selected for the 

 Marnock home, is, in the writer's opinion, one of the most beau- 

 tiful in Bexar County. Even in summer, when a Texas sun 

 shows little mercy, there is a wonderful coolness and freshness 

 in the little pass through the hills and across the rippling creek. 

 It was among the bluffs, within a short distance of his home, 

 this nature lover's own little paradise, that Marnock collected 

 his new species of frogs and lizards and many of his most inter- 

 esting specimens of snakes. 



After her husband's death, Mrs. Marnock presented a por- 

 tion of his collection to the Scientific Society of San Antonio 

 and sold the balance to the Baylor University Museum. 



In addition to the Bexar County material from the Mar- 

 nock collection, I am in possession of specimens collected at San 

 Antonio by the late Messrs. Julius Hurter and Louis Garni. Mr. 

 Hurter's visit to the section was a brief one and as a result 

 only a very small collection was made by him. Mr. Garni was 

 a teacher in St. Louis College located about five miles from San 

 Antonio. He was an intelligent and enthusiastic naturalist and 

 to his generosity the Baylor Museum is indebted for many speci- 



