80 RANA PIPIENS. 



General Remarks. In no one of our frogs is there more difficulty in ascer- 

 taining its original specific name. Clayton, in the Philosophical Transactions* 

 for 1694, simply mentions it as a large frog, "bigger than any in England, which 

 makes a noise something like the bellowing of a bull." 



Catesby, whose description is very correct, calls it the Bull-frog, under which 

 name it is now universally known, and says, "the noise they make has caused 

 their name, for at a few yards distance their bellowing sounds very much like 

 that of a bull a quarter of a mile off." 



Kalm, though he calls it by the same name, began the confusion by referring it 

 to the Rana ocellata of Linnaeus, from which it is perfectly distinct; for this Rana 

 ocellata first appears in the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae, and is easily 

 identified, as Linnaeus gives but a single reference. Brown's History of Jamaica; 

 and in his description he says, "plantae pentadactylae sub-palmata;," which 

 certainly cannot apply to the Bull-frog. Kalm, however, insisting on the identity 

 of the Rana ocellata and Bull-frog, perhaps led Linnaeus, in the twelfth edition of 

 the Systema Naturae, to give two other references for the animal, the Rana 

 halecina of Kalm, and the Rana maxima, &c. of Catesby, and never were three 

 frogs more distinct. 



Gmelin, in his edition of the Systema Naturae, copies the errors of Linnaeus, 

 and adds another reference to Seba, whose animal is not even the real ocellata, 

 which is found on the seventy-fifth, and not on the seventy-sixth plate, as he 

 supposes. 



The specific name, pipiens, was not applied by Linnaeus to any Frog, but was 

 first used by Gmelin, so far as I know, and given to a very different animal, the 

 Water-frog of Catesby, the common Shad-frog, which had previously been 



* Vol. xviii. p. 125. 



