18-4 Mr. G. A. Boulenger on a new Batrachian. 



be regarded as the great exception among Anura taken as a 

 whole? 



It' it be permissible to speculate on the phylogeny of 

 Ali/tcs^ I would su'^gest tliat it is the large size of the eggs 

 that has enabled its direct ancestors to take to ovipositioii on 

 land, and not that the character of the eggs has been modified 

 to that effect*. I have ah'eady expressed the opinion t» 

 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 Crypfohrnnchus 

 and Alytes, viz., intermediate between the meroblastic and 

 liolobhastic, that Bufo (extreme reduction of the food-yolk) 

 and Hyhde.s (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 Cryptohranchus 

 and Megalohatrachus. 



XVII. — On a Second Species of the Batrachian Genus 

 Amphodus. By Gr. A. BouLENGER, F.RiS. 



(Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 



The remarkable genus Amphodus was proposed by Peters J 

 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- 

 phractidse, 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 mig:ht feel inclined to adduce, in opposition to uiy argument, 

 the case of fhe Solomon Islands frogs, which, deprived of suitable water 

 for larval existence, dispense with the metamorpboses, 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. 



t ' Lea Batraciens' (Paris, 1910), p. 49. 



X Mon. Berl. Ac. 1872, p. 768. 



