DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 197 



ticularly one respecting its venomous qualities, which is quite 

 false. A French naturalist remarks that, if we could behold 

 the frog without prejudice, we should see in it an animal 

 uniting an elegant form with light and slender limbs, adorning 

 the banks of the rivulet with its pleasing colours, (only less 

 variable in some species than those of the chameleon,) and 

 animating the scene with its light and lively gambols. The 

 croaking noise of the frog is proverbial ; this is changed in the 

 love season to a soft and plaintive note. A modern writer 

 says, " A traveller towards the desert shores of the Caspian and 

 the Volga would imagine that he heard of a sudden, in the 

 evening, a joyous assembly of men and women laughing very 

 heartily. He approaches ; the inextinguishable laughter re- 

 doubles among the rocks, and, to his astonishment, he finds 

 that it proceeds from an assembly of enormous black toads, 

 celebrating their nuptial rites." 1 



Although the frogs and toads are now, generally speaking, 

 small animals, we must recollect that such has not always 

 been the case. The Batrachia, whose footsteps occur in the 

 carbonigenpus era, and at a somewhat later date, must have 

 been as large as good-sized hogs. It may at the same time be 

 remarked that, if this was the utmost size attained by 

 batrachia in the era of the secondary formation, they were 

 then, as now, relatively much smaller than the saurian order, 

 of which several reached the length of thirty, forty, and even, 

 it is believed, seventy feet. 



A second division of batrachia is composed of animals of 

 which the salamander is the type ; hence called Salamandridce. 

 In them the tail is largely developed : in other respects, as in 

 their reproductive history, they resemble the preceding division, 

 the water-newts being analogous to the frogs, and the land- 

 salamanders to the toads. They also resemble the ranidae in 

 habits ; but one remarkable species, the Menopoma of the 

 Ohio and Alleghany rivers, which reaches two feet in length, 

 is more fierce and carnivorous than any of the frogs or toads. 

 The salamandridse are extensively diffused over the earth ; 

 they generally are small animals, but one species, Sieboltia, 

 which inhabits a lake upon a basaltic mountain in Japan, is 

 three feet in length, and fossil species are found in the schists 

 of (Eningen (miocene formation), which must have been of 

 nearly twice this measurement. The fluid which exudes from 

 the salamanders, as from other batrachia, is probably what 



1 Griffith's Cuvier, ix. 42. 



