184 Mr. G. A. Boulenger on a new Batrachian. 
be regardéd as the great exception among Anura taken as a 
whole ? , 
If it be permissible to speculate on the phylogeny of 
Alytes, I would suggest that it is the large size of the eggs 
that has enabled its direct ancestors to take to oviposition on 
land, and not that the character of the eggs has been modified 
to that effect*. I have already expressed the opinion +, 
based on the assumption that batrachians were derived from 
fishes related to the Crossopterygians and Dipnoans, which 
produce eggs of a type similar to those of Cryptobranchus 
and Alytes, viz., intermediate between the meroblastic and 
holoblastic, that Bufo (extreme reduction of the food-yoik) 
and Hylodes (suppression of the larval life) are extreme and 
divergent examples evolved out of a condition such as we 
still find in the thoroughly aquatic Urodeles Cryptobranchus 
and Megalobatrachus. 
XVII.—On a Second Species of the Batrachian Genus 
Amphodus. By G. A. BouLencer, F.R.S. 
(Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 
THE remarkable genus Amphodus was proposed by Peters ¢ 
for a small tree-frog from Bahia which, being provided with 
teeth in the lower jaw and having cylindrical diapophyses to 
the sacral vertebra, has been referred to the family Hemi- 
phractide, from the other genera of which it is separated by 
the presence of teeth on the parasphenoid. Peters suggested 
at the time that his Amphodus wuchereri might be closely 
related to, if not the same as, Hyla luteola, described by Wied 
- from specimens observed on the east coast of Brazil living 
mostly between the leaves of Bromelias. * 
I am now able to add a second species to the genus, which 
was previously only known to me from the description and 
figure. This species is so near to A. wuchereri that when 
* As one might feel inclined to adduce, in opposition to my argument, 
the case of the Solomon Islands frog# which, deprived of suitable water 
for larval existence, dispense with the metamorphoses, I may mention 
that I have recently described a frog from Siam— Rana pileata—which in 
all probability breeds in water, the female of which measures 52 mm. in 
length and the uterine eggs 3 mm. in diameter, exactly as in Alytes 
obstetricans. : 
+ ‘Les Batraciens’ (Paris, 1910), p. 49. 
t Mon. Berl. Ac. 1872, p. 768. 
