SOME ANOMALIES IN THE GENITAL ORGANS OF 
BUFO LENTIGINOSUS AND THEIR 
PROBABLE SIGNIFICANCE. 
BY 
HELEN DEAN KING, 
Assistant in Anatomy, Wistar Institute. 
WITH 26 FIGURES. 
During the course of a series of investigations on the germ-cells 
of the common American toad, Bufo lentiginosus, I have had occa- 
sion to examine a large number of these amphibians at various 
stages of their development, and I have found many individuals in 
which the genital organs showed marked deviations from the normal 
type. The most striking of these anomalies are described in the 
present paper. Many cases of this kind have a direct bearing on the 
question of the existence of hermaphroditism in the primitive verte- 
brates, and but few of them have as yet been recorded for any 
amphibian other than Rana. 
I. ANOMALIES IN THE GenrTAL Orcans or Youne Toaps. 
Anomalies occur much more commonly in the sex-glands of young 
toads than in those of adults, and at least two per cent of the young 
individuals that I have examined showed more or less marked irregu- 
larities of this kind. As most of the toads in which abnormalities 
were found were reared in the laboratory, one might infer that the 
anomalies were the result of pathological changes produced in the 
genital organs by abnormal environmental conditions. That such 
is not the case, however, is shown by the fact that eleven individuals 
in which the sex-glands were anomalous in some respect were found 
in a lot of 500 young toads that had completed their metamorphosis 
under natural conditions. 
Although in Bufo sex is probably determined at or before the 
time that the egg is fertilized, the gonads are often in an apparently 
THH AMDPRICAN JOURNAL OF ANATOMY.—VOL. 10, No. 1, JAN., 1910. 
