FROM THE TERTIARY BEDS IN THE TSLANB OF BOMBAY, 5 



as a Bana. Both genera are in many other respects closely allied, still 

 there are a few other points to be noticed which tend to support the 

 g-eneric determination of the fossil species. 



The genus OxTjglossus was initiated by Tschudi for a species, 0. lima, 

 which is found along the coast of Siam and China. Dumeril and Bibron 

 (Herpetologie VIII, p. 335,) state that it was also brought by Belanger 

 from Bengal, which is not very improbable. Giinther (Reptiles of India, 

 1864, p. 401,) states that he had never seen a specimen of 0. lima larger 

 than Ij inches long. Gray described in the catalogue of the Batrachia 

 Salientia, 1858, p. 6, a second species, 0. lavis, which is said to occur only 

 in the Philippines. I am not acquainted with any more species of that 

 genus ; of the second, however, I was fortunate in being able to examine 

 a few specimens. The locality of these is unknown, but as there were in 

 the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal hardly any reptiles from the 

 Philippines, it is rather likely that the specimens are Indian. They only 

 differ from Gray^s type by the want of the few brown spots on the throat ; 

 the presence or want of the median dorsal stripe - is, as in many other 

 Banida, not a constant specific character. 



Comparing now the large size of the head of the fossil species, its 

 proportions certainly resemble more those of the recent Oxyglos8iis than 

 those of Rana proper. The comparative shortness of the calcaneus and 

 astragalus (being hardly more than half the length of the femur), and the 

 comparatively greater length of the bones forming the ulna and radius 

 (not being much shorter than the humerus), characterize the fossil as a 

 species, the salient power of which was less developed than in most of the 

 species of true Rana. The intermaxillaries are also in proportion generally 

 broader in Oxyglossns than they are in Rana. The diapophyses of the 

 sacral vertebrae are in the former club-shaped, as in the fossil species, not 

 cyhndrical, as usually in the latter. 



All the specimens which I have examined are such as have completed 

 their metamorphosis, and are mostly of the same, or very nearly the same, 



( 391 ) 



