1869.] MR. ST. GEORGE MIVART ON ANUROUS BATRACHIANS. 28) 
authority of Tschudi* and MM. Duméril and Bibron +. Thirdly, 
Mr. Cope admits that he was misled as to the existence of teeth in 
Callula natatriz. Perhaps a similar circumstance may have occurred 
as regards Colostethus, or perhaps Hylaplesia may be found to have 
teeth at some period of life. 
Next in importance to the presence or absence of teeth I am dis- 
posed to rank the condition of the development of the ear and the 
dilatation of the sacral transverse process, I am moreover inclined 
to lay additional weight on them from their not being adaptive cha- 
racters—the dilatation of the sacral vertebra being, as we have seen, 
apparently independent of locomotive habit. 
As to the condition of the internal ear, neither Dr. Giinther nor 
Mr. Cope are disposed to attach primary importance to it; and I 
fully agree with the first-named author in thinking that “the Batra- 
chians with imperfectly developed ear would form together an un- 
uatural group, and would be separated too far from other allied 
forms’’+, if that character were made the main character in Batra- 
chian classification. Nevertheless it seems to me a character of such 
great importance that I propose to rank it next after the presence or 
absence of teeth. 
Of the characters that remain the most readily available are the 
presence or absence of parotoids and the dilatation or non-dilatation 
of the tips of the digits. 
That the latter character is, as Mr. Cope considers, not one of 
any great real value, seems to me to be demonstrated, as before said, 
by the varying condition in which it is found in the single genus 
Callula. The presence or absence of parotoids therefore may, I 
think, well take precedence of the digital disks as a distinctive cha- 
racter. As to the ‘ presence or absence of a web between the toes,”’ 
that character can only be applied with doubt and uncertainty even 
to certain groups ranking as low as genera. 
Making use of these characters in the subordination above indi- 
cated, we shall have, besides Pipa and Dactylethra, two great series— 
(1) a toothed (Frog) series, and (2) an edentulous (Toad) series. As 
some of the animals of the latter series seem to offer the lowest 
condition found in the order, we may ascend through them to the 
Frogs, beginning with a section containing those in which the ear is 
imperfect. The first family of these will be the Rhinophrynide, 
which have parotoid glands and a tongue free anteriorly. The 
second family will be the Phryniscide, in which there are no parotoid 
glands, and in which the tongue is fixed in front.- The next eden- 
tulous section will consist of such toothless forms as have a perfect 
ear. It will contain one family with an undilated sacral vertebra 
(the Hylapleside) and three families in which the sacral vertebra is 
dilated, the first of the three (Bufonide) having parotoid glands, the 
other two being destitute of such structures and distinguished from 
* “Classification der Batrachier,’ p. 71, “Dentes masillares et palatinos bre- 
visstmos.” 
t Erpétologie Générale, vol. viii. p. 614. 
| Proce. Zool. Soc. 1858, p. 342. 
