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Show 556 M. G. A. BOULENGER ON THE [Nov. 16 they are depressed and half-webbed; the subarticular tubercles are large and single-rowed. . The back is covered with more or less prominent, sometimes spinous, distinctly porous warts of various sizes; as in the preceding species, those at the angles of the mouth are much developed. Very often a series of larger prominent warts extends on each side of the body ; this character is very conspicuous in specimens from Denmark. The upper surface of the forearms and calves is nearly smooth ; that of the arms and thighs is slightly warty. The granules of the lower surfaces are larger and more distant from one another on the lower belly and under the thighs. The upper surfaces are covered with large, irregular, insuliform, more or less confluent, olive or green spots, often margined with black, on a greyish, brownish, or pinkish ground. These spots are sometimes smaller, isolated, resembling the markings of some species of Felis. They are rarely interrupted on the vertebral line, as is the case in B. raddei. The larger warts of the angles of the mouth, of the sides of the body, and sometimes of the back, of a reddish or pinkish tint. The large greenish spots are generally more accentuated in females than in males. Contrary to what Dr. Fatio1 thought, the specimens always have a duller coloration during the breeding-season. A character which has often been used as distinguishing this species from B. calamita is the absence in the former and the presence in the latter of a yellow vertebral line. But this line, which is sometimes wanting in B. calamita, sometimes occurs in B. viridis ; I have seen many specimens, from Italy and from Algiers, which exhibit more or less distinct traces of it. The lower surfaces are dirty-white, sometimes without, sometimes with more or less abundant blackish or olive spots. The presence or absence of these spots does not correspond with the sexes. The iris is greenish yellow, vermiculated with black. The males are furnished with a subgular vocal sac, which is much less developed and less pigmented than that of B. calamita; as in the latter, the openings which give access to the air are sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right side. Blackish rugosities occupy the inner side of the first three fingers during the breeding-season; on the thumb they cover a much greater surface than in any other species of Bufo. Skeleton.-The prefrontals are large, subtriangular, convex, once and a half as broad as long, in contact on their whole inner surface, or slightly separated behind by the prolongation of the upper plate of the ethmoid. The fronto-parietals are flat, much broader backwards than forwards, especially in males ; the fontanelle is much smaller than in JB. calamita. The zygomatic apophysis of the tem-poromastoidians is very short. The vertebral column, to the base of coccyx, measures once and a third in males, once and a half in females, the length of the skull. The diapophysis of the seventh and eighth vertebrae are rather strongly directed forwards ; those of the ninth or sacral are a little 1 Faune dee Vertebras de la Suisse, iii. p. 413. |