OCR Text |
Show I880.J PALAEARCTIC AND ^ETHIOPIAN TOADS. 571 large metacarpal tubercles-one on the middle of the hand, large and rounded, another at the base of the thumb, smaller and oval. The hind limb is moderately elongate; being carried forwards along the body the metatarsal tubercles reach the eye in the male, the shoulder in the female ; the tibia is considerably longer than the head and destitute of a parotoid-like glaud. There is no tarsal fold. The metatarsus is provided with two large tubercles-the inner very prominent and oval, the outer flat and rounded. The toes are moderately elongate, depressed, nearly entirely webbed in the male during the breeding-season, at other times half-webbed; the subarticular tubercles are small and two-rowed. The upper surfaces are covered with irregular, more or less prominent, often spinous warts, the pores of which are nearly quite indistinct to the naked eye; the Japanese specimens are remarkable for the greater prominence of the warts, which are very spinous; the Chinese have also the warts very prominent, but rather less spinous and more elongate, as if two warts had blended into one. The lower surfaces are granular, the granules being larger and more distant from one another on the lower belly and beneath the thighs. The upper surfaces are brown, greyish or reddish, with irregular dark brown or blackish spots. The young and some females have the parotoids and the large warts fine brick-red. The parotoids are margined on their outer side with dark brown or black, which, in Chinese and Japanese specimens, extends as a vitta along the upper side of the flanks. The lower surfaces are dirty white, greyish or brownish, more or less spotted with blackish; these spots are very large and dark in the Asiatic specimens. The iris is reddish, more or less vermiculated with black. The male is furnished with blackish rugosities on the inner side of the first three fingers during the breeding-season. Most recent authors have considered the Chinese and Japanese specimens of this Toad a distinct variety (B. vulgaris japonicus, Lataste), or even species (B. japonicus, Camerano). But none of the characters given to distinguish them from the typical form appear to me to be constant. These chief characters are the more prominent and spinous warts and the black horny layer on various parts of the body, the rather larger head, and the blackish stripe on the flanks. M. Lataste has discovered a difference in the shape and size of the liver and of the testicles in specimens from Pekin. If the Japanese form should be separated from the European, it should certainly also be separated from the Chinese : but 1 do not think that distinction necessary ; and I do not agree with M . Lataste when he says that, on the same ground upon which he has separated Bana esculenta of Europe from its Asiatic representative B. marmorata, he admits two subspecies in B. vulgaris, viz. cinereus and japonicus. Skeleton.-The prefrontals are large, subtriangular or pear-shaped, convex, once and a half as broad as long, their inner edges in contact on their whole length. The fronto-parietals are flat, not or scarcely broader backwards than forwards, without fontanelle. The zygomatic apophysis of the temporo-mastoidians is very short. |