590 Pseudis, “ The Paradoxical Frog.” [ October, 
loses by the next change, for when it has passed he is smaller than 
when it began. 
His first mention in literature takes him up at this. period: 
Through some Dutch collectors in Surinam, Albert Seba secured 
specimens of the adult and of the large larvæ with and without 
limbs. Comparing the smaller with the larger he came to the 
conclusion that the development was retrograde: that the animal 
was first a frog, then acquired a tail, then lost its limbs, and 
finally — the remote resemblance between the coils of the intes- 
tine and the sucking disk of the gobies probably suggesting the 
idea — became a fish. His conclusions with sketches were com- 
municated to Mlle. Marie Sybille de Merian, who published them 
in her work on the Insects of Surinam, citing Seba as the source. 
The latter published the same a few years later in his Thesaurus 
(volume i., plate 78, 1734), where he gives a series of figures 
illustrating the transformation of the frog into the fish. This 
version of the story was at first accepted by Linné (Mus. Ad. 
Fridr., 1754) and by Edwards (Phil. Trans., volume li.). In 
the tenth edition of the Systema Nature (1758-59) Linné cor- 
rects the matter, and the name Rana piscis of Merian gives way 
to Rana paradoxa Linné. From that time until within a year 
the “ frog-fish” seems to have known his place. Wagler, in 
1830, applied the name Pseudis, on account of the errors into 
which the early observers were led, and the genus then estab- 
lished under this title has been generally accepted by authors. 
Last year a chapter was added to the history of the “ paradox- 
ical frog,” which refers us back to the beginning. Page 31 of 
the Archivos do Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, volume i, 
1876, second and third trimesters, contains an article with this 
title: Nota descriptiva de um pequeno animal extremamente Cu- 
rioso e denominado Batrachchythis, by Dr. Pizarro. From 
description and the figures on plate vi., it is not difficult to rec- 
ognize our old friend the young Pseudis, of whose peculiarities 
the doctor does not seem to have been aware. There is little 
doubt that Batrachichthys — to whom the author calls the at- 
tention of Messrs. Darwin, Haeckel, and Martins — will alti- 
mately go through his transformations, become a veritable Pseu- 
dis, and be degraded from his position as connecting link between 
fishes and batrachians. Should he go no further, as is barely 
possible, he would even then be only a link between the adult 
and the tadpole, and no more closely allied to the fishes than 
either. In this case, which is only a supposition, his standing 
