11 PREFACE. 



and derive from the perusal of these pages one-tenth 

 of the pleasure it has given me to write them ; I shall 

 feel amply rewarded for the trouble I have taken. 



I would also express a hope that a little book of 

 this kind, embodying in a concise form the result of 

 much study, at present scattered in a multitude of 

 publications in some ten different languages, may 

 have the effect of stimulating interest to a subject 

 that has been too much neglected, and in the cultiva- 

 tion of which new workers will find much to repay 

 their efforts, especially if applied in other regions of 

 the globe, which, though much richer in Batrachians, 

 have as yet yielded little or nothing to our knowledge 

 of the life-histories. 



This work has been planned with the view of 

 assisting the beginner as well as of affording new 

 information to the advanced student, and the synoptic 

 treatment has therefore been frequently resorted to in 

 the Introduction; whilst all descriptions in the sys- 

 tematic part are strictly comparative. Technical 

 terms have not been avoided, but the numerous figures 

 in the text should render them easily intelligible to 

 the beginner. 



At the desire of the Council of the Ray Society this 

 volume is issued in two parts. The second part, 

 continuously paged and with bibliographical and alpha- 

 betical indexes, is to follow in a few months. 



The plates, twenty-four in number, have been exe- 

 cuted by Mr. P. J. Smit and joi-inted by Messrs. 

 Mintern Brothers. With two exceptions, all the 

 coloured figures have been taken from living speci- 

 mens. Five of the plates (I, II, III, XVI, XVII) 

 have already appeared in the ' Proceedings of the 



