70 REPTILES. 



by the Frencli tapire (a). AVe are assured it is a brown species, 

 with two whitish bands transversely united in two places (Daud. pi. 

 viii); the toes of the hind feet are almost free*. 



BuFo, Laur. 



Toads have a bulky body covered with warts or papilla; ; a thick lump 

 behind the ears pierced with pores, from which issues a milky and fetid 

 humour; no teeth whatever; the hind feet but slightly elongated. They 

 leap badly, and generally avoid the water. They are hideous and dis- 

 gusting animals, whose bite, saliva, urine, and even perspiration, are con- 

 sidered, though erroneously, as poisonous. 



Rana bufo, L. ; Roes. Ran. XX. (The Common Toad). Red- 

 dish-grey, or grey brown; sometimes olive or blackish; the back 

 covered with rounded tubercles as large as lentils ; smaller and more 

 closely set tubercles on the belly ; the hind feet semi-palmate. It 

 remains in dark places, and passes the winter in a hole which it ex- 

 cavates. It couples in the water in March and April; when this 

 takes place on shore, the female drags herself to some ditch, &c., 

 carrying the male with her: she produces innumerable small ova, 

 united by a transparent kind of jelly in two strings, that are often 

 twenty or thirty feet long, in the extraction of which the male assists 

 with his hind feet. The Tadpole is blackish, and is the smallest of 

 the European species, at the period when it acquires legs and loses 

 its tail. The Common Toad lives upwards of fifteen years, and 

 has young at four. Its cry has some resemblance to the barking of 

 a dog. 



R. hufo calamita, Gm. ; Roes. XXIV; Daud. XXVII, 1. (The 

 Bush Frog). Olive-colour; tubercles, as in the preceding; but not 

 such large swellings behind the ears ; a yellow longitudinal line on 

 the spine, and a dentated reddish one on the flank : no membrane to 

 the hind feet. It diffuses a disagreeable odour, like that of gun- 

 powder, lives on land, and never leaps, but runs tolerably fast; 

 climbs up walls, to seek a shelter in their crevices, and for that pur- 

 pose has two little osseous tubercles under the palm of the hands. 

 It never visits the water except to couple, in the month of June ; 

 the female lays two strings of eggs, like the Common Toad; the 

 voice of the male, w^hich has also a sac under the throat, resembles 

 that of the Stained Tree Frog. 



Bufo fuscus, Laurent. ; Rana hombina, </, Grm. ; Roes. XVII, 

 XVlil. (The Natter-Jack). Light brown, marbled with dark 



* Add, of species whose hind toes are but slightly palmate, H. femoralis, Daud. 

 IV;— //. squirella, Daud. V;— //. trivittala, &c., Spix, IX;— //. abbreviata, Id. XI, 

 4; — //. delitescciis. L. C, and H. versicolor. Id. Ice. cit. 



The Hyla ajaiiea, Daud., of New Holland, according to White, p. 248, has but 

 four toes behind; and M. Fitzinger, who appears to have seen it, has consequently 

 formed it into his genus Calamita. We have one ii-om the same country, and ex- 

 actly similar, which certainly has five. 



^^ (-■/) And hence its l-'rcnch name, Raincttc a lapircr. 



