If my toads shall establish a colony on the west bank, for the convenience of future collectors, I shall not so much regret my own disappointment. I regretted it at the time all the more, because one or two of the animals appeared to me a different species from any of the Phrynosomata I have ever seen described; in their general figure resembling P. Douglass, and their heads being decidedly like that of P. Cornutum. At several places in the mountains I sought for the "fish with legs," which almost every old mountaineer has seen, but for none of which, as a matter of course, can anything be obtained like a scientific description. Whenever we stopped near a small stream to water or change horses, I spent all the available time in looking for him, but regret to say that fortune never favored me. I suppose the animal to be a species of Siredon. I need not explain to the student of natural history my anxiety to obtain a fresh specimen,-perhaps even a new species, of a genus thus far represented in cabinets by but two or three species and very few individuals, even these inadequate relics being imperfectly preserved.

The animal to which Baird has given the specific name of Lichenoides is one of the most beautiful and interesting of reptiles; having the head without the horns of the cat-fish, and a respiratory apparatus consisting of three branchial flaps on each side of the neck, fringed more delicately than the gills of any fish; and owing its special designation to the yellow spots distributed over the black or brown ground of its skin, like the variegations caused by lichens on the surface of a stone.

At Sage Creek, an inconsiderable but unfailing riv ulet, fed from the snow-peaks, and about fourteen

miles from the North Platte crossing, we met for the first time the bird most characteristic of the intramontane levels and western slope of the Rocky Range the Sage-cock.

This bird may well be called the king of the grouse tribe. His own average length is about thirty-two inches, and his hen's two feet; but I have seen specimens which exceed these measurements by several inches. When stalking erect through the sage, they seem as large as a good sized wild turkey. Their color and markings differ to some extent with age, sex, the season of the year, and the different individuals; but the prevailing appearance is that of a yellowish brown, or a warm gray mottled with darker brown, shading from cinnamon to jet black, the dark spots laid on in longitudinal series of crescents. Their under parts are of a light gray, sometimes of almost a pure white tint, barred by slender longitudinal, streaks of brown, the middle of the belly being pied with black patches. Their plumage is exquisitely smooth; the feathers of a handsome cock lying so close and kept in such perfect order, that under a bright sun he looks more like a bird encased in some beautifully grained and polished veneering than one in the usual cloak of feathers. The elegance of his figure exceeds that of any grouse on the Continent. He is slenderer and finer in his outlines than any allied bird, except the Chinese or golden pheasant. In recognition of his resemblance to these birds he gets one of his numerous aliases, -Tetrao (Bonaparte), or Centrocercus (Swainson) Urophasianus. Urophasianus. This last and specific title etymologists will recognize as Greek for pheasant-tailed." This tail of his seems to have puzzled ornithologists somewhat as to the place where he

belongs. It differs from that of the grouse family in general, by coming to a point instead of flaring in a fan; and some of his sponsors have made a new species for him, taking him out of the Tetraonidæ and calling him Centrocercus, which, in connection with his specific title, certainly amounts to a pleonasm, the word being derived from the Greek xévτpov (a point) and xépxos (a tail), so that the translation of Swainson's nomenclature would be "The Pheasant-tailed Point-tail." The better view still keeps the bird a Tetrao. On each side of his neck he has a bare orange-colored spot, and near it a downy epaulet, which allies him as nearly to the ruffed grouse as his tail to the pheasant. His call is a rapid "cut-cůt-cut," followed by a hollow blowing sound; he has the partridge's habit of drumming with his wings; his female knows the trick of misleading the enemy from her young brood; and although his curves are much longer and his figure less stocky than that of the grouse tribe in general, his affiliations on the whole seem stronger in that direction than in any other. He seldom rises from the ground, and his occasional flights are low, short, and labored; but he runs with rapidity, and in his favorite habitat, the sage brush, dodges and skulks with great dexterity, favored by the resemblance between his own and the bushes' neutral tints. common title of sage-cock is derived from his favorite haunt. Another of his aliases is "Cock of the Plains," but I never knew him so called out of books, for the title is not descriptive. He is never seen on the Plains proper- the high mountain region, whether level or sloping, swarming with his family wherever sage is plenty, from the vicinity of the Rocky Mountain water-shed westerly to the Desert, and several

His

hundred miles further west in the latitude of the South Pass, where he extends as far as the cataracts of the Columbia. In that region the sage brush has a much further westerly extension than further south, -and the bird peculiarly belongs to this growth of vegetation. Thus far, to my knowledge, he has never been found west of the Cascade Range or the Sierra Nevada. In the spring, or about the time of snow melting, which of course varies at different heights and in different latitudes, the sage-hen builds in the bush her nest of sticks and reeds, quite artistically matted together, and lays from a dozen to twenty eggs, a trifle larger than the average of the domestic fowl, of a tawny color, irregularly marked with chocolate blotches on the larger end. Her period of incubation does not, I believe, differ much from that of the domestic hen. When the brood is large enough to travel, its parents lead it into general society. In July and August the flocks begin assembling, and by fall it is not unusual to meet bands of two or three hundred. I reached and crossed their habitat during the last week in June, and between Sage Creek and Salt Lake daily encountered flocks of a score or over. I know scarcely any animal whose range is more sharply defined. It is a rare thing to meet with them on the eastern flanks of the ridges belonging to the Rocky Mountain system; though while I was in Denver, my friend, the indefatigable naturalist Dr. Wernigk, brought back from an expedition into the South Park very fine specimens of both cock and hen. This fact, however, hardly constitutes an exception to the general rule, since South Park is but little over a degree further east than Sage Creek, and sheds a portion of its water to the west

by small affluents of the Grand Fork of Colorado, though most of its drainage is by the South Platte.

I never saw tamer wild fowl than the little troop of sage-chickens which we encountered on striking Sage Creek. I could hardly realize they were what they were, though I had a vividly correct image of them in my mind from the stuffed specimens of Dr. Wernigk, and the admirable drawings of Baird's collec tion. As we wound along the brook margin, they strutted complacently between the gnarled trunks and ashen masses of foliage peculiar to the sage, pay. ing scarcely more attention to us than a barn-yard drove of turkeys (whose motion theirs much resembles), the cocks now and then stopping to play the dandy before their more Quakerish little hens, inflating the yellow patches of skin on each side of their necks, by a peculiar air-syphon apparatus, until they globed out like the pouches of a pouter pigeon. As this was the first time I had seen them in their native haunts, and because their confidence quite disarmed me, I had no thought of shooting them, and had the driver slow his team to give our party a better opportunity of studying them. They continued dodging about the bushes not more than forty feet from us, until we thoroughly familiarized ourselves with their manners; and acknowledged that although some others of the grouse tribe rejoiced in richer colors than they, they certainly bore away the palm in the exquisite symmetry of their markings, and the grace of their figures as well as their movements. Wishing to get nearer them for the purpose of seeing if any young ones were concealed in the brush (whose trunks, consisting each of a number of smaller stems united in a spiral twisted as tight as