110 BULLETIN 151, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



A perusal of these descriptions impresses one with the remarkably 

 few differences of other than sexual significance. It is true that 

 A. alhijer is said to lack a papilla on the tongue but as already- 

 remarked *' in the case of A. stenodadylus where the preservation is 

 not perfect it is frequently next to impossible to detect any projec- 

 tion of the papilla above the slight depression in which ii^ lies. The 

 pointed or blunt character of the snout is sexual and not specific^ 

 and the measurements of the types of ^. scheffleri (female) and ^. alhi- 

 jer (male?) tend to support this contention. When Boulenger said of 

 minutus "snout shorter than the diameter of the orbi^," I take it 

 that he meant from the nostril to the end of the snout as "snout "^ 

 while "alhifer's" snout is evidently measured from the anterior 

 border of the eye. In minutus and albifer the interorbital space is 

 wider than the upper eyelid while A. scheffleri is said to have it "about 

 as wide." Boulenger described the webbing of minutus as extending 

 as a narrow fringe to the tip of the toes. While a very close exami- 

 nation shows this to be actually the case it is not obvious and is 

 rather misleading. 



Recently Angel has recorded " Arthroleptis graueri Nieden" from 

 Mount Kinangop, Kenya Colony on the basis of a single 19 mm. 

 frog (P. M. 24-21). Personally I consider graueri more closely re- 

 lated to those species of PTirynohatrachus which exhibit a rather 

 lyre-shaped glandular ridge on the anterior part of the back, than 

 to Arthroleptis. Nieden also, though first describing it as an Arthro- 

 leptis later referred it to Phrynohatrachus. Angel, however, says, 

 that he considers it an Arthroleptis. At my request he very kindly 

 loaned me the frog for examination. 



I consider that this Kinangop frog is undoubtedly an Arthroleptis 

 though not graueri but minutus and have compared it with examples 

 of minutus from Phillipshof, Usambara Mountains, Tanganyika 

 Territory, which Mr. H. W. Parker very kindly compared with the 

 type of minutus in 1928. 



In this connection I might add that Dr. G. K. Noble dissected aa 

 Amani specimen of minutus and found that it had an Arthroleptis-like 

 short cartilaginous sternum and that the omosternum was only 

 moderately forked. 



A comparison of P. graueri with A. minutus shows that the former 

 is a much larger frog with larger feet, greater amount of webbing, 

 better developed disks, and usually (though this character may be 

 masked in ill-preserved specimens) exhibits the raised converging, 

 then diverging, glandular ridges which proceed from a point behind 

 the eye and extend posteriorly to the middle of the back. 



" Barbour and Loveridge, 1928, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 50, p. 209. 



