12 L. G. ANDERSSON, BATRACHIANS. 
Crinia signifera Gir. — Figs. 1 a—l. 57 specimens from several places. 
33 specimens from Perth, Sept. 1910. 
3 > from pools in the Fitzroy-River, Kimberley Division, N. W. 
Australia, "/u 1910. 
14 > in different springs in St. George Range, Kimberley, about 170 
miles from the coast; February 1911. 
2 > Mundaring near Perth, ””/s 1911. 
1 > Yandina, S. E. Queensland, at the foot of Blackal Range, about 
20 miles from Brisbane in the rain-forest; !/, 1911. 
4 » Adelaide, W4o 1911: 
According to FLETCHER this species is common in the whole of New South Wales, 
LUCAS mentions several localities for its occurrence in Victoria, and ENGLISH states 
it to be very common in Tasmania. Also from West Australia it is mentioned be- 
fore, and this expedition found it to be common at Perth as well as in the interior 
of the Kimberley Division. During the short stay in South Eastern Queensland and 
in Adelaide it was also caught. Evidently it is one of the most common of the 
Australian frogs. From the North coast, however, I have not seen it recorded, nor 
has it been found by the HoRrn-expedition in the central regions of Australia. 
Being so common, this species is at the same time so very variable, especially 
with regard to the colour, a fact very conspicuous in the above mentioned collection 
from Perth, where once in one and the same pool a great number of different colour 
variations were found (figs. 1 a—h). As the authors generally only state the great 
variation of this species, without going further into details, it seems to me that a 
further account of this matter will be of a certain value. 
As all kinds of colour variations were met with at the same time and at the 
same place, it is evident that the variation does not depend on locality nor on season 
nor is it, except to some extent, due to age and sex. All the colourpatterns in fig. 1 
are to be found in males as well as in females, in rather small specimens as well 
as in large ones. As a rule, however, the males are darker than the females,! as 
ENGLISH also says (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1910 p. 630), and the quite small specimens are 
uniform black. Most of the specimens from different localities are, as briefly poin- 
ted out in BoULENGER'S catalogue, »olive above, marbled or longitudinally striped 
with darker», but as a rule it may be said that the larger the specimens are, the 
smaller and more indistinet become the otherwise so regular dark markings. In some 
of the largest specimens — among these the largest I ever had (23 mm.) — the 
upper surface was almost uniform, brown in the male, olive grey in the female. 
The change of the dark juvenile colour to the lighter fullgrown one appears 
to take place in different specimens at very different time; thus some loose already 
quite early almost all their larval garb, while some keep nearly all of it a long time. 
These changes also take place in a rather different way in different specimens, the 
whole PrOeeES causing a very great and at the first glance almost quite irregular 
1 The Sex ha as been stated by examining the presence or absence of the slitlike openings which in the 
males on each side of the tongue lead into the vocal sac. 
