REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS 



219 



(Tomistoma schlegeli), the sole living representative of its kind. Schlegel's gharial 

 was first discovered in Borneo, to which island it was long supposed to be peculiar, 

 but in 1890 it was recorded from Sumatra, and later from the Malay Peninsula. 

 From the Indian gharial the Malay species differs by its proportionately shorter 

 snout, but still more markedly by the circumstance that in the skeleton of this 



• ■ 



region the nasal bones extend so far forward 

 as to join the premaxillary bones which form 

 the tip of the muzzle, instead of being separated 

 from them by a considerable interval. The 

 teeth, too, are less numerous, and some of them 

 are considerably larger than the others instead 

 of the whole of them forming a nearly even 

 and regular series. Java is the home of the 

 common Malay flying-lizard {Draco volans). A 

 few amphibians, though common to the islands 

 and the mainland, are worth mention, such, for 

 instance, as the tiger-frog (Rana tigrina), 

 whose range extends westwards to India and 

 Ceylon. This, the largest of the Indian 

 frogs, lives principally in water, and leaps along its surface in the same way as on 

 firm ground. The flying-frogs, ranging from India to China, Japan, and Madagascar, 

 and characterised by their long webbed toes which act as a kind of parachute, are 

 represented in the Archipelago by the Javan Rhacophorus reinwardti, and another 

 species in Borneo. The first account of the habits of the flying frog of Borneo 

 {Rhaccyphorus pardalis) was received with incredulity, and the statement as to its 

 flying powers thought to be exaggerated. Recent observations, however, tend to 

 show that in the main this account is correct, and that the frogs of this genus 



retnwardt's flying frog. 



