Reptiles and Birds / A Popular Account of Their Various Orders, With a Description of the Habits and Economy of the Most Interesting

by Louis Figuier

Amphibia—(Batrachia, Cuv.)

Animals having ribs or processes, or short, slight, and free vertebræ, forming a series of separate centrums, deeply cupped at both ends, one of which is converted by ossification in the mature animal into a ball, which may be the front one, as in the Surinam Toad, Pipa, or the hind ones in the Frogs and Toads, Rana. The skin is nude, limbs digitate, gills embryonal,—permanent in some, in most lost in metamorphosis,—to be succeeded by pulmonary respiration,—or both; a heart with one ventricle and two auricles. They consist of:—

I. Ophiomorpha.
Cæciliadæ or Ophiosomæ.
II. Icthyomorpha.
Proteidæ or Sirens, Proteus, Newts, and Salamanders.
III. Theriomorpha.
Aglosa	Pipa or Surinam Toads.
Ranidæ	Frogs.
Hylidæ	Tree Frogs.
Bufonidæ	Toads.