AMERICAN TOAD. 703 



Bufo mu«ieu«, tt antericanus, Hakz.ai7, Dumebil and Bibron. 

 jBm/o /owJ«ri, Putnam. 

 Bufo cogntiXvti, Sat, 

 £u/o frontotiui, Copb. 



General color above cinersas to dark slate, speckled with whitish-gray and brown ; 

 beneath yellowish or dirty white; gnlar region and under aide of legs darker; head 

 small ; nostrils vertical, smaller and closer together than the inner narea ; eyes moder- 

 ate ; pnpii black ; irides golden ; tyrapannm small, its color rendering it not rery 

 apparent ; feet each with two plantar tubercles, the one large acd the other small ; hind 

 legs obscurely barred with darker ; above granulate ar speckled oyer with small Warts ; 

 forehead with two long ridges swollen behind ; very variable, owing to age, season, 

 sex, and will of the animal. Length, 3| inches ; hind limb, Zi inches ; fore limb, 1^ 

 inches ; breadth of bead, H inches ; depth of head, { inch ; head to axiila, \\ inches. 



The typical Bwfo lentiginoaus is exfralimital, having its habitat South Carolina, Flor- 

 ida, Alabama, Mississippi; but our fauna inolndes var. am'.ricanus, LeConte, which dif- 

 fers from the above by having the bony ridges moderate and not mnch swollen behind ; 

 the small warts npon the back replaced by mnch larger anes, and a yellewish vertebral 

 line extending from the occipital region backwards. 



Habitat, Labrador, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, 

 New York, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Kassas, Dakotah, 

 "Great Bear Like." 



The American Toad, including its varieties, is the analogue of 

 Bufo vulgaris of the old world, and, like that species, has a remarkably 

 wide distribution, ranging from the Esquimaux River and Okak, Labra- 

 dor, to Florida and Texas and Mexico, and north to Dakotah and Lake 

 Winnipeg; and Gunther in his catalogue mentions a specimen sent by- 

 Sir J. Richard on from the Great Bear Lake. In brief, this genus ap- 

 pears to be almost world wide, with the exception of Australia, in their 

 distribution, and a striking fact is that the Japanese specimens of Bufo 

 vulgaris approach more nearly to the American Toad than do the Euro- 

 pean. They also attain a large size in elevated regions. 



Our toad during the day remains in concealment, crouched in cavities 

 under stones, dead or decaying trees, or stumps, and is sometimes in 

 cellars, or drowned in wells. They have been found in the latter situa- 

 tion buried in the mud at the bottom, but still alive, and are upposed 

 to have been interred for some time. They are mild and timid animals, 

 which oviposit in May, and begin to disappear the last of August or fore- 

 part of September. Like the frogs, they repair to ponds and hybernate 

 in mud, where they have been found a foot below the surface. Bell 

 states that they eat their skin as soon as cast, and, in Massachusetts, Allen 

 found frogs and toads under stones in an unfrozen spring in February. 



Mr. W. K. Higley, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, informs me that ha has 

 seen the common American Toad, in April, repair in great numbers to 



