296 RANID.E. 



Brown above, with metallic spots ; caudal crests 

 greyish- white, with small brown spots and golden 

 dots on the anterior half of the upper crest ; some- 

 times a series of large brown spots on the upper edge 

 of the tail, or a linear series of small golden spots 

 along the upper and lower crests ; belly greyish with 

 golden dots. 



Total length 43 mm. ; body 16 ; width of body 10 ; 

 tail 27 ; depth of tail 9. 



Habitat. — Bana awaits is often described as a 

 boreal species, but this is quite incorrect. Its 

 northern range extends but slightly beyond that of 

 R. esculenta, and stops short by 10° of that of B. tem- 

 poraria. It is only found on the south-eastern coast 

 of Norway, where it is local and rare; in Sweden it 

 does not reach much further north than Upsala, 

 and in Russia not bevond South-eastern Finland. It 

 is really an Eastern species, which, except in the 

 south, has much the same range as Bufo viridis, being 

 generally distributed in the eastern parts of Central 

 Europe, and becoming more and more local towards 

 the Rhine, on the left side of which it is as yet 

 only known from a small district in Alsatia and 

 Switzerland. The broken, spot-like character of its 

 distribution towards the west, and the nature of the 

 localities in which it usually occurs, as sphagnum 

 bogs, fens, neglected meadows, &c, clearly point to its 

 being, in those parts, in process of gradual extinction, 

 a relic of a former period, the conditions of which 

 are fast disappearing through human agency except 

 in the mountains, which this species nowhere ascends 

 beyond 2000 feet. Were B. arualis a boreal form, as 

 stated by some authors, its range in Central Europe and 

 its absence from the mountains would be not exactly 

 unparalleled, but very much more difficult of explana- 

 tion. 



In Europe the species occurs from the Northern 

 and Middle Ouralto Holland (near Apeldoorn), several 

 localities east of the Rhine (Elberfeld, Siegburg near 



