Batrachians.—The Spanish discoverers in 1567 remarked that the natives of Isabel worshipped the toad (vide [page 203]), and one of the officers of Surville’s expedition in 1769, described in his journal a remarkable toad from the same island;[446] yet it is only within recent years that any Batrachians have been collected in this region. Before I arrived in the group only two species were known to science, and to this number my collections, which were made in the islands of Bougainville Straits, have added seven new species, including a type of a new family. The following list represents the Batrachian fauna of the Solomon Islands, as far as it is at present known:

[446] “Discoveries of the French in 1768 and 1769,” &c., by M. Fleurieu: London, 1791; p. 134.

Ranidæ.

Ceratobatrachidæ.

(New family characterised by both jaws being toothed, and by the diapophyses of the sacral vertebra not being dilated.)

Hylidæ (Tree-frogs.)

The natives of the islands of Bougainville Straits, where, as I have just remarked, my batrachian collection was chiefly made, have given frogs the general name of “appa-appa” in imitation of their noise, just as they have named the smaller lizards “Kurru-rupu” for the same reason. Amongst the particular species of frogs, I may refer to the large toad-like Rana buboniformis, which I found in Treasury Island, and on the highest peak of the island of Faro. Rana guppyi, according to Mr. Boulenger’s report, attains a larger size than any other species of the genus, with the exception of the Bull-Frog of North America. Rana opisthodon affords an instance of a Batrachian[447] which dispenses with the usual larval or tadpole stage, “the metamorphoses being hurried through within the egg.” On this subject I made the following notes. Whilst descending from one of the peaks of Faro Island, I stopped at a stream some 400 feet above the sea, where my native boys collected from the moist crevices of the rocks close to the water a number of transparent gelatinous balls rather smaller than a marble.[448] Each of these balls contained a young frog about 4 lines in length, apparently fully developed, with very long hind legs and short fore legs, no tail, and bearing on the sides of the body small tufts of what seemed to be branchiæ. On my rupturing the ball or egg in which the little animal was doubled up, the tiny frog took a marvellous leap into its existence and disappeared before I could catch it. When I reached the ship an hour after, I found that some of the eggs which had been carried in a tin had been ruptured on the way by the jolting, and the liberated frogs were leaping about with great activity. On placing some of them in an open bottle 8 inches high, I had to put the cover on as they kept leaping out. Mr. Boulenger remarking on this observation says, that there are no gills, but that on each side of the abdomen there are regular transverse folds (with an arrangement like that of the gill-openings of Plagiostomous Fishes), the function of which probably is that of breathing-organs. The tip of the snout is, he says, furnished with a small conical protuberance, projecting slightly through the delicate envelope of the egg, and evidently used to perforate that covering. In the instance also of Cornufer solomonis, another new species included in my collection, Mr. Boulenger remarks that there is every reason to believe that the young undergo the metamorphoses within the egg.