( 131 ) 
ON BAN A FU8CIGULA AND B. ANG0LENSI8. 
By a. A. BouLENOER, LL.D., D.Sc, F.R.S. 
{Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 
The frogs of the genus Bana, taken in the narrowest sense, are repre- 
sented in South Africa by two closely allied, aquatic species, which may be 
regarded as the representatives of the Eurasian and North African B. escu- 
lenta, from which they differ principally in the cranial characters, the nasal 
bones never meeting on the median line, and a considerable portion of the 
upper part of the ethmoid remaining uncovered by the fronte-parietal bones, 
and also in the absence, in males, of external vocal vesicles. These two 
species have long been known under the names of B. fiiscigula, T>. & B., 
and B. angolensis, Bocage, or delalandii, D. & B.,* and until lately they were 
regarded as perfectly distinct. 
Within the last few years, however, doubts have been raised as to their 
status by Hewitt f and by Andersson,:]: who independently suggested an inter- 
gradation which, if confirmed, would reduce B. angolensis to subspecific 
rank. Mr. J. H. Power has also experienced difficulties in drawing a line 
between the two species, as they occur near Kimberley, and, at his sugges- 
tion, I have examined a portion of the material preserved in the Kimberley 
Museum, kindly sent to me for study by Miss Wilman, to whom I wish to 
express my best thanks. § 
Adding to this the fine series in the British Museum, I have been able to 
examine about seventy specimens of B. fuscigida and about one hundred of 
* I believe two species have been confounded under this name by the authors of 
the ' Erpetologie Generale/ viz. R. angolensis and R. oxy rhynchus, as their description 
of the vomerine teeth applies to the latter and not to the former. However, M. 
Chabanaud informs me that only two type specimens are now preserved in the Paris 
M Liseum, and both agree with the definition of E. angolensis. The statement Cette 
espece est fort commune aux environs da Cap de Bonne Esperance " is erroneous, as 
neither of the two which they appear to have confounded occurs in the Cape 
Peninsula. 
t 'Rec. Albany Mus.,' ii, 1911, p. 206. 
X 'Svensk. Vet. Ak. Handl.,' xlvii, no. 6, 1911, p. 26. 
§ All the sjiecimens had been correctly identified by Mr. Power, but he writes to 
me that he has received, and actvially caught, some which he has boon unable to refer 
to either species, owing, I believe, to his having paid too much attention to the shape 
of the snout as a diagnostic character. 
