94 BARBOUR — SOLOMON ISLAND REPTILES Pv^l^Vll 



Ceratobatrachus guentheri Boulenger 



Ceratohatrachus guentheri Boulenger, P. Z. S., 1884, p. 212; Trans. 

 Zool. Soc, 12, 1886, p. 56, pis. 12-13. 



The Museum previously considered itself very fortunate to 

 possess two of the types of this beautiful frog, which Mr. Guppy 

 collected upon Faro Island. Dr. Mann found it abundant, as 

 did Guppy, who, however, found it only on Faro and Treasury 

 Islands. Our collection contains the following: 



Seven from Ysabel; three from Tulagi; seventeen ^ from 

 Malaita, and one from Atta high in the interior of Malaita, a 

 region hitherto unvisited by white men. 



Boulenger created a special family to include this monotypic 

 genus alone, the Ceraiobatrachidae. The only character, how- 

 ever, which separated it from the Ranidae was the possession 

 of teeth on both upper and lower jaw. Recent studies of some 

 of the South American Leptodactylid genera show that teeth 

 on the jaws may be very easily lost and probably almost as 

 easily acquired, so that families based on the presence or ab- 

 sence of teeth alone are likely to be unnatural assemblages, and 

 frequently to separate very closely allied species. A case in 

 point is to be seen in the frogs of the Andean Lakes Titicaca and 

 Junin. About Titicaca Telmatobius aemaricus is an abundant 

 inhabitant of the brooks and swamps, while its apparent deriva- 

 tive T. culeus inhabits the deep water of the lake and is highly 

 modified for a wholly aquatic existence. About Lakes Junin and 

 Jauja-paca T. jelskii occurs as an abundant terrestrial form, 

 while its strictly aquatic ally in the deep lakes is Batrachophry- 

 nus microphthalmus, a form modified similarly to T. culeus, but 

 which has gone a single short step further and has lost its vomer- 

 ine and maxillary teeth. It has been placed in the Batrachophry- 

 nidae, when in reality to put it in a genus other than Telmatobius 

 is to mask its true relationship. So here it seems best to suggest 



1 From this series specimens already have been distributed to the Museums in Washing- 

 ton, New York, Leyden and Ann Arbor. 



