XXXIV. ON AELUROPHRYNE M A M M AT A , 



GTHR., AN ADDITION TO THE BATRA- 



CHIAN FAUNA OF KASHMIR. 



By G. A. BouLENGER, LL.D., F.R.S., Hony. Foreign Correspon- 

 dent, Zoological Survey of India. 



When in the Ladakh Valley, Kashmir, in August 1917, my son 

 Captain C. L. Boulenger found, at an altitude of 12,000 feet, under 

 a stone, a single young toad, measuring 25 mm. from snout to 

 vent and still bearing a stumpy vestige of the tail. This toad was 

 at first a puzzle to me. Its vertical pupil, combined with the 

 absence of teeth, suggested the curious forms, annectant to the 

 Bufonidae and the Pelobatidae, which I have described under the 

 names of Cophophryne^ and Ophryophryne.^ I am now convinced 

 that it is the young of the toad described by Giinther^ as Bufo 

 niammatus, from the Kham Mountains in the Chinese province of 

 Sze Chuen. 



Giinther's specimens were, as he admitted, in a poor state of 

 preservation, and the shape of the pupil could not have been 

 recognized. But an examination of the vertebral column and of 

 the pectoral arch, which I have been able to make on one of the 

 type specimens in the British Museum, shows the sacral vertebra 

 to have unusually strongly dilated transverse processes and to 

 articulate with the coccyx by a single condyle, as in Pelobaies and 

 Megalophrys, with both of which it agrees also in the structure of 

 the pectoral arch (precoracoid strongly curved, sternum with a long 

 bony style), thus confirming my first impression as to the affinities 

 of the Kashmir specimen. Bufo mammatus, for which I now pro- 

 pose the generic name Aclurophryne, in allusion to the cat-like 

 pupil, is closely allied to Cophophryne, differing from it in the 

 absence of a notch in the posterior border of the tongue, which is 

 oval in shape ; the tympanum is present, though hidden under the 

 skin, and the eustachian tube moderately large. 



We are therefore now acquainted with three closely related 

 generic types filling the gap between the Pelobatidae and the 

 Bufonidae, and it may appear a moot point as to which of the two 

 famines they should be referred. As I am more and more losing 

 faith in the Importance of the presence or absence of teeth_ as a 

 family character,* I would suggest an alteration of the definition of 



1 An7t. and Mag. N. H. (5) XX, 1887, p. 406. 



2 Op. cif. (7) XII, 1903, p. 186. 



3 Ann. Mus. Zool. St. Pefersb., 1896 p. 10. 



4 Cf. Boulenger, Ann. and Mag. N. H. (6) I, 1888, p. ibh. 



