268 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF AUSTRALIAN BATRACHIA, 



and in places white spots, on a greenish background, the pattern 

 being thrown up and emphasised by contrast with sundry symme- 

 trically arranged insular areas free, or almost so, from papillae, and 

 of a lighter tint, bright yellow or greenish-yellow. The largest 

 warts for the most part outline the pattern, and border the insular 

 patches ; there is little more than only an anterior edging of them 

 in the posterior or lumbar limb of the H ; the others with the red 

 spots and patches, and in the lumbar band and on the flanks 

 white spots, are scattered over the surface so outlined ; f rom 

 behind the eye downward and outward to the shoulder and along 

 the sides and flanks on each side is another dark band, but with 

 fewer, more scattered and still smaller papillae, some of them parti- 

 coloured—black and white. Thus six areas wholly without warts, 

 or occasionally with a large one here and there, are enclosed, 

 and these, as mentioned above, are of a lighter and yellower tint : 

 two of them are median, an anterior cruciform or dagger-shaped 

 one between and behind the eyes, and a posterior coccygeal narrow 

 band, these two representing the bifurcation of each end — a little 

 extended — of the cross-bar of the IT : the others are in pairs, an 

 anterior pair in front of, and a larger posterior pair behind, the 

 anterior limb of the H. The outer surface of the arms and legs, 

 especially the latter, are also spotted with red, and the back of the 

 thighs with white on a dark ground. 



Looked at in the laboratory, for example in a white dish, 

 Notaden is brightly coloured and conspicuously marked ; when 

 placed on the grass of the lawn, however, the animal was 

 very much less conspicuous, and as long as it kept still 

 even a good observer unaware of its presence and unfamiliar 

 with the animal might, I think, have passed close to it with- 

 out noticing it. Nevertheless there seems little need to doubt 

 that we have here a case not of 2^ r otective, but of warning colora- 

 tion. The former would probably have been amply provided for 

 as in some green tree-frogs, by a more or less uniform livery of 

 green or greenish-yellow, without the elaborate arrangement of 

 coloured papillae, and specks, &c. f which is present ; neither are 

 the grass-lands of the interior quite like well kept city lawns. 



