1885.| Zvilogy. 1231 
France, Switzerland and Northern Italy. G. A. Boulenger calls 
attention, in the Zodlogist to the existence of two kinds of aqua- 
tic frogs in North Germany. Though included as sub-species of 
R. esculenta, they can be distinguished from each other at first 
sight, and breed at different times of the year. In the typical 
R. esculenta, the inner metatarsal tubercle is compressed and 
large, and the black marbling of the flanks and hinder side of the 
thighs encloses more or less of bright yellow ; while in the larger 
variety, R. fortis, the inner metatarsal tubercle is small, elongate, 
and feebly prominent, and there is no yellow on flanks or thighs. 
The whole physiognomy is different and the fact that the larger 
kind breeds earlier keeps the breeds pure. 
Reptiles—G. A. Boulenger describes Agama dorie, a new lizard 
from Bogos in Northern Abyssinia. In proportions and characters 
of the scales it is similar to A. colonorum, between which and 
A. bibronii it is intermediate. Dr. O. Boettger’s list of the rep- 
tiles and Batrachia of Paraguay, comprises sixty-three species 
collected by H. Rohde, of which nineteen are lizards and twenty- 
four snakes. The new lacertilian genus Micrablepharus, is insti- 
tuted for M. glaucurus, and other new species are Amphisbaena 
albocingulata, Lepidosternum boulengeri, strauchi, affine and onycho- 
_cephalum, Mabuia tetratenia, Liophis genimaculata, Rhinaspis 
rohdei, Leptognathus cisticeps, and the batrachians Engystoma 
albopunctatum and mulleri and Leptodactylus diptyx. 
Birds.—The collection of “ Birds of the British Asian Empire,” 
recently donated to the British Museum by Mr. O. O. Hume of 
Simla, contains 63,000 skins of birds, 300 nests, and 18,500 eggs. 
It contains about 2000 species, each represented by some thirty 
examples, mostly representing different stages of growth or degrees | 
of variation. Mr. Hume has been the best authority on Indian 
ornithology, and intended to publish a work on the “ Birds of the 
British Asian Empire,” but other duties, and the loss by theft of 
his manuscripts, determined him to donate his collections to the 
British Museum, that they might be worked up by Mr. Sharpe. 
R. Ridgway (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., April 20, 1885) describes a 
new more brightly colored variety of /eterus cucullatus from 
Yucatan; Centopus pileatus from some part of Tropical America; 
Cyanocorax cucullatus and a variety of Vireolanius pulchellus from 
Costa Rica, and Certhiola finschiand C. sundevalli from the Lesser 
Antilles! Mr. Ridgway also gives a key to the species of Certhi- 
ola (honey creepers) and gives the name of Branta minima to a 
very small form of barnacle goose which breeds in Western Alaska 
and migrates south to California in winter. Onychotes (Buteo) 
gruberi Ridgway, formerly thought to be a Californian bird, is now 
by its original describer, on the faith of a plate published in the 
report upon the birds of the Challenger Expedition, considered a 
synonym of Buteo solitarius, from the Sandwich islands. Mr. 
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