ECAUDATA. 121 



Class AMPHIBIA. 



Order ECAUDATA. 



Body of adult short, destitute of a tail, and furnished with four 

 limbs, of which the pelvic pair are the larger and adapted for 

 leaping. No gills in adult. Skull short and wide, with the parietals 

 confluent with the frontals, and the orbits usually undefined; a 

 " girdle-bone " in the ethmoidal region, and a predentary ossification. 

 Presacral vertebrae few in number, and generally procoelous ; 

 vertebral column terminating in a long urostyle ; dorsal ribs usually 

 absent. Ilia prolonged backwards, so as to throw the acetabulum 

 far behind the sacrum ; radius and ulna, and tibia and fibula 

 respectively fused together ; and the calcaneum and astragalus 

 greatly elongated. Four digits in the manus and five in the pes, 

 with an additional ossicle in the pes which apparently represents a 

 prehallux. 



Section FIRMISTERNIA. 



Coracoids firmly united by a single epicoracoid cartilage ; pre- 

 coracoids, when present, resting with their distal extremity upon 

 the coracoids, or connected with the latter by the epicoracoid car- 

 tilage. A tongue. 



Family BANID^E. 



Teeth in the upper jaw ; sacral processes with slight or no 

 terminal expansion ; vertebras procoelous ; no dorsal ribs ; urostyle 

 articulating with the sacrum by two condyles, and without transverse 

 processes. 



Genus OXYGLOSSUS, Tschudi \ 



No teeth on the vomer. Omosternum with a bony style ; sternum 

 forming a cartilaginous plate. Terminal phalangeals simple ; digits 

 of manus free, those of pes webbed. Head relatively large. 



The species of this Oriental genus are of small size, usually not 

 exceeding 1J inch in length. 



1 Mem. Soc. Neuchatel, vol. ii. art. iii. p. S5 (1839). 



