VI 



BUFONIDAE 1 79 



activity. The voice of tlie luale, strengthened by ii suhgulai- sac, 

 is said to be a kind of knul snoring bark. The pairing time 

 begins, according to llensel,^ with the winter rainy season, especi- 

 ally June, and lasts several months, until October, but it is 

 interrupted by tlie cold, wliicli in the liills of South-Eastern 

 Brazil covers the ponds with ice. Then the tremulous bass 

 voice of the males is heard no longer ; tliey have all withdrawn 

 beneath stones and trees in the neighbourhood of the water. The 

 eggs are laid in strings. The larvae are at first quite l)lack and 

 very small, and the young baby-toads are only 1 cm. in length. 

 They differ considerably from the adult until they are more than 

 1 inch long ; the upper parts are yellowish brown, with darker 

 ocellated patches, each with a light seam, most conspicuous along 

 the sides of the head and back. 'Jlie under parts are grey, finely 

 stippled with yellow. 



Budgett" remarks that B. marinus feeds on all kinds of insects. 

 " One half-grown specimen sitting by a man's foot picked off fifty- 

 two mosquitoes in the space of one minute, picking them up witli 

 the tongue as they settled. The call of this very common toad 

 consists of three bell -like notes; the middle one being the 

 highest. The enormous parotoid glands are discharged like 

 squirts when the creature is roughly handled. When wet weather 

 comes on it hops out from its hiding-place to sit in a puddle, 

 with its head out." 



Tn many species of Bufo the crown of the head forms more or 

 less prominent ridges, especially strong in the region between the 

 eyes ; for instance, in B. mclanostictus and B. lentiginosus. The 

 skin overlying these ridges is liable to be involved in the cranial 

 ossification, and this reaches its greatest extent in the two Cuban 

 species B. einpusus and B. peltocephalus. It is a curious coincidence, 

 to say the least, that such dermal ossifications should be Ijest 

 developed in Neotropical species, in those very countries which 

 amongst the Cystignathidae have produced the abnormal genera 

 Tri'prion, Calyptocephalus, and Pternohyla. The most peculiar 

 and odd - looking species is Bufo ceratoplirys, a native of 

 Ecuador, which has the upper eyelid produced into a horn-like 

 appendage, the two sharply-pointed cones standing out trans- 

 versely, reminding us of several species of the Cystignathoid 

 genus Ceratophrya ; there is also a series of four small pointed 



' Arch. Xaturg. xliv. 1868, [l IJl. - Quart. J. Micv. Set. xlii. 1899, p. 3. 



