198 AMPHIBIA 



the aid of his hands, forces them into the subgular vocal sac 

 which, as usual, communicates with the floor of the mouth by a 

 long slit on each side of the tongue. 



(2) C. d. /3. The female of a West African tree-frog, 

 Hylambates breviceps, carries the eggs in her mouth, as do some 

 Silurid and Cichlid fishes. These eggs are large (four milli- 

 metres in diameter) and few in number. 



(2) D. Two small East African toads, one referred by 

 Tornier to Pseudophryne {P. vivipara), the other by me to 

 Nectophryne (N. tornieri) are known to be viviparous, but no 

 observations have yet been made on them beyond the fact that 

 larvae are found in the uteri. 



II. Tailed Batrachians. 



Whilst in all Tailless Batrachians, with the exception of the 

 two viviparous toads, fecundation takes place after the extru- 

 sion of the eggs, as in most fishes, in the Tailed Batrachians 

 (salamanders, newts, etc.) impregnation is as a rule internal. 

 There is, however, no copulation in the strict sense, as we shall 

 find in the following order, the Apodal Batrachians, but the 

 spermatozoa are absorbed by the female. The male, after 

 lengthy and varied amorous preludes or evolutions around the 

 female, or after a period of embrace, emits, at short intervals, 

 several conical or bell-shaped spermatophores, adhering to the 

 ground or to stones by their base and crowned by a bunch of 

 spermatozoa which the female gathers with the lips of her 

 cloaca, either by mere application or by her holding the 

 spermatophore between her hind legs and pressing the mass of 

 spermatozoa into the cloaca. In Cryptobranchus (and probably 1 

 also in Megalobatrachus) the fecundation is believed to be ex- 

 ternal. 



In most newts {Molge or Triton), our British species in par- 

 ticular, and in the axolotl {Amblystoma), with which we are 

 familiar as an aquarium animal, the courtship is not accom- 

 panied by any sort of enlacement ; all the male does is to 

 execute the most lively antics in front of the female, and to 

 occasionally hit her with his snout or rub himself against her 

 to entice her to respond to his advances — a sight witnessed by 

 all who have kept our smaller newts in an aquarium in the 

 early spring, the larger British species {Molge cristata), for some 



