AMPHIBIA. 253 



Porto Rico or the Virgin Islands, but I offer it as the only possibility I can think of. The 

 wrecking of a vessel with a cargo of logwood or mahogany a hundred years or more ago might 

 account for this remarkable distribution." 



Now considering that L. alhilabris occurs upon more than one island, it is 

 necessary to postulate a series of unlikely events to explain its accidental occur- 

 rence. It is more probable that the Porto Rican and mainland individuals have 

 by some fortuitous parallelism become indistinguishable if they originally be- 

 longed to different stocks or if both were derived from the same stock then they 

 have preserved their identity in parts of their range and varied with isolation in 

 other parts. The occurrence in the East Indies of Rana macrodon in the greater 

 Sunda Islands and New Guinea, and of Rana modesta, a derivative of R. macrodon 

 in Celebes is a case of similar distribution. The Lesser Antillean species are 

 almost certainly not introduced, since Labat informs us that frogs (L. penta- 

 dactylus) were a common article of food in Martinique and other islands as early 

 as 1724. That they probably belonged to this species is shown by his stating 

 that they lived in the woods and not in the water and by his description of their 

 colors. The occurrence of a peculiar Leptodactylus upon Haiti, and there is 

 evidence that a species occurs upon Cuba also, is not as astonishing as appears 

 at first. 



It is quite possible that other species remain undiscovered, while in the 

 Lesser Antilles at least it is entirely probable that they may have been extermi- 

 nated upon some islands because of their edible qualities. That the genus was 

 once generally distributed throughout the area I have no doubt whatever. 



In February, 1912, wliile collecting with Mr. R. M. Grey upon his Colonia 

 of the Soledad estate near Cienfuegos, Cuba, we both saw a large frog leap a 

 number of times over a grass plat and take refuge in a small pond. Mr. Grey 

 said it was a "bull frog" and that thereabouts such frogs were rare and shy. He 

 has been trying, so far without success, to secure one, and I also searched for it 

 in vain. I recognized at once that it was far larger than any Eleutherodactylus 

 which I had ever seen and at the time concluded that it was a large Hyla which 

 was perhaps approaching the water for breeding purposes. In the light of the 

 finding of this species upon Haiti, I have but little doubt that it was an un- 

 known Leptodactylus. 



Leptodactylus validus Garman. 

 Garman, Bull. Essex inst., 1887, 19, p. 14. 



This species was described from St. Vincent (Types M. C. Z., No. 2,183). 

 Later, however, Boulenger called specimens from the same island L. caliginosus 



