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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. LIV 



behooves the now deservedly but still very highly vaunted "field 

 naturalist" to write with care when he deliberately invades the 

 province of his more lowly associate. Systematists know that the 

 preparation of a good, useful check-list of a region like British 

 Guiana is no task to be entered upon lightly nor unadvisedly and 

 because , the work is not spectacular, arouses little popular ac- 

 claim and is slow and tiresome, we sometimes wonder whether 

 these facts have not a high value in explaining the rather super- 

 cilious and scornful appraisal given to a mere check-list by the 

 modern field naturalist. Admittedly, however, this work if 

 worth doing at all, is worth doing well but this list of Beebe's 

 is so phenomenally bad that we are loath to believe that Mr. 

 Beebe has tried to make it even moderately good. For example, 

 in so far as reptiles and amphibians — or mammals — are con- 

 cerned there is no evidence that specimens of many of the ob- 

 scure species discussed have ever been preserved for examina- 

 tion by a herpetologist. 



We read of Bufo molitor. This name was given by Tschudi 3 to 

 a toad from high Peru. Naturalists in recent years have so far 

 as I know felt reasonably sure that this was a synonym of Bufo 

 marinus pure and simple. Stejneger has said recently : 



Whatever may be the status of Tschudi's Bufo molitor the half grown 

 toad [taken by the Yale Peruvian Exp.] collected at Santa Ana . . . 



So also all the Peruvian examples collected by Mr. G. K. Noble 

 and now in the M. C. Z., Cambridge. Here then this name ap- 

 pears resurrected in literature and recorded from Bartica, of all 

 places, and no proof whatsoever offered to support so wholly 

 improbable a statement. 



Bufo sternosignatus Keferst. The types came from western 

 Venezuela and Colombia. Giinther's figure of this species shows 

 how easily it also might be taken for the young Bufo marinus. 

 Since apparently the species is not known from eastern South 

 America can this be called a valid record until Beebe's specimen, 

 if it was preserved, falls into a herpetologist 's hands? 



Hyla indris Cope. Another species, known apparently only 

 from Cope's original description which strongly suggests that 

 it was probably nothing but an individual variant of Syla 

 crepitans. 



