A review of the frogs, described from the Australian continent. 
he first Australian frog which is scientifically described seems to be the Common 
Blue Frog, Hyla ccerulea, diagnosed and figured by J. WHITE in Journ. N. SS. 
Wales 1790. A few years later G. SHAw in the Naturalist s Miscellany vol. 6, tab. 
200 describes and figures another species which he calls Rana Austrialica. Both these 
species are mentioned in J. G. ScHNEIDER'S Historie Amplhluibiarum, Jena 1799—1801, 
Rana austrialica, however, named R. spinipes, and said to be »ex insulis oceani Aus- 
trasiam cingentis». In Vol. III, Part I, Amphibia, of his great work, General Zoology, 
London 1802, G. SHAw accepts ScHNEIDER'S name for his R. austrialica, but he says 
that its habitat is really New Holland, from which country he had obtained a draw- 
ing of it, the type of his diagnose and figure. He has evidentely not seen the ani- 
mal itself. His description, however, does not correspond with any Australian frog, 
»Pedes anteriores supra aculeati etc», — I have not had the opportunity of seeing 
his figure — and possibly SCHNEIDER is right about its habitat. Possibly it is a 
species of Bufo, perhaps B. melanostictus. Being so very doubtful, the Bana Austria- 
lica SHAw or RB. spinipes SCcHNEID. disappears very soon from the literature, and I 
have only seen it mentioned in the works, quoted above. In DAUDIN'S Histoire 
naturelle des Reptiles, Paris 1803, as well as in CUVIER'S Regne Animale, and in MER- 
REM'S Versuch eines Systems der Amphibien, Marburg 1820, but a single Austra- 
lian species is recorded, viz. WHITE'S Rana (Hyla) cerulea from N. S. Wales, and as 
late as 1820 this species alone represents the batrachian fauna of Australia. 
The year mentioned, however, LESSON in Duperrey, Voy. Coquille Zool. IT, des- 
cribes two new species from the Australian continent, viz. Hyla aurea, very common 
in most coastal regions, and Rana papua, the single representative of the family 
Ranide in Australia, and now the batrachian world even of this continent begins to 
be brought into light. Still it goes rather slowly; in the year 1835 J. E. GRAY des- 
eribes in Proc. Zool. Soc. p. 57 Bombinator (Pseudophryne) australis, founded on a 
specimen according his statement from Swan River, and 1839 TscHupi adds four 
new species, described in his Classification der Batrachier, published in Mem. Société 
Sc. Nat., Neuchatel, for this year, viz. Crinia georgiana from King George's Sound, 
South West Australia, Dendrohyas (Hyla) peronii from »New Holland>, and Dendro- 
hyas (Hyla) citropa and Litoria (Hyla) freyceneti from Port Jackson, Sydney. 
