426 SPANISH-TOWN. 



my friend possessing no slight claims to distinction. 

 He thus describes it to me, under date of Jan. 5, 1847. 

 " It is distinctively a Toad, but of prodigious size, 

 being six and a half inches from the muzzle to the 

 coccygeal extremity, and as broad as it is long. It was 

 taken by some negro labourers while clearing land, 

 in the neighbourhood of the Rio Cobre, at Passage 

 Fort; and we are indebted to Mr. Robert Wilkie, our 

 clerk of the peace, who had been seeking a sea-side 

 change of air in that vicinity, for this interesting 

 addition to the Jamaican Fauna. I can say little about 

 any peculiarity it may have. Twice when taken out 

 from the moist corner of the out-room in which I keep 

 it, and brought into the house, it has discharged a 

 large quantity of liquid from its vent, quite colour- 

 less ; — and when I have had it by me in a reclined 

 glass shade (one of the glass cylinders we use over 

 candles), while making a drawing of it, I have smelt 

 an odour, not very strong, but sufficiently offensive, — 

 a compound of garlic and exploded gunpowder, — which 

 I suspected came from it, but which I could not trace 

 to it. The whole cuticle is tuberculous. The tu- 

 bercles on the back, arms, and thighs are very large ; 

 but the surface of each is smooth, except those of the 

 expanded eye-brows, which are rough and warty." 



A few days afterwards another specimen came into 

 Mr. Hill's possession, dead. — " Its hinder legs are 

 longer, and its hinder feet are more deeply webbed 

 than those of the former Toad ; the connecting mem- 

 brane in my living one being very little more than 

 rudimentary. Though this last specimen is not so 

 large as the first, it is still monstrously big, and in 



