Page:EB1911 - Volume 03.djvu/541

 column, which is thus the most abbreviated among all the vertebrata.

Frogs and toads occur wherever insect food is procurable, and their distribution is a world-wide one, with the exception of many islands. Thus New Caledonia, which has a rich and quite special lizard-fauna, has no batrachians of its own, although the Australian Hyla aurea has been introduced with success. New Zealand possesses only one species (Liopelma hochstetteri), which appears to be rare and restricted to the North Island. The forest regions of southern Asia, Africa and South America are particularly rich in species.

According to our present knowledge, the Ecaudata can be traced about as far back in time as the Caudata. An unmistakable batrachian of this order, referred by its describer to Palaeobatrachus, a determination which is only provisional, has been discovered in the Kimmeridgian of the Sierra del Montsech, Catalonia (25), in a therefore somewhat older formation than the Wealden Caudata Hylaeobatrachus.

Apart from a few unsatisfactory remains from the Eocene of Wyoming, fossil tailless batrachians are otherwise only known from the Oligocene, Miocene and Pliocene of Europe and India. These forms differ very little from those that live at the present day in the same part of the world, and some of the genera (Discoglossus, Bufo, Oxyglossus, Rana) are even identical. Palaeobatrachus (26), of which a number of species represented by skeletons of the perfect form and of the tadpole have been described from Miocene beds in Germany, Bohemia and France, seems to be referable to the Pelobatidae; this genus has been considered as possibly one of the Aglossa, but the absence of ribs in the larvae speaks against such an association.

Numerous additions have been made to our knowledge of the development and nursing habits, which are extremely varied, some forms dispensing with or hurrying through the metamorphoses and hopping out of the egg in the perfect condition (27).

Skeleton.—In the earliest forms of this order, the Stegocephalia, we meet with considerable variety in the constitution of the vertebrae, and these modifications have been used for their classification. All agree, however, in having each vertebra formed of at least two pieces, the suture between which persists throughout life. In this they differ from the three orders which have living representatives. Even the inferior arches or chevrons of the tail of salamanders are continuously ossified with the centra. As a matter of fact, these vertebrae have no centra proper, that part which should correspond with the centrum being formed, as a study of the development has shown (H. Gadow, 14), by the meeting and subsequent complete co-ossification of the two chief dorsal and ventral pairs of elements (tail-vertebrae of Caudata), or entirely by the pair of dorsal elements. In the Ecaudata, the vertebrae of the trunk are formed on two different plans. In some the notochord remains for a long time exposed along the ventral surface, and, owing to the absence of cartilaginous formation around it, disappears without ever becoming invested otherwise than by a thin elastic membrane; it can be easily stripped off below the vertebrae in larval specimens on the point of metamorphosing. This has been termed the epichordal type. In others, which represent the perichordal type, the greater share of the formation of the whole vertebra falls to the (paired) dorsal cartilage, but there is in addition a narrow ventral or hypochordal cartilage which fuses with the dorsal or becomes connected with it by calcified tissue; the notochord is thus completely surrounded by a thick sheath in tadpoles with imperfectly developed limbs. This mode of formation of both the arch and the greater part or whole of the so-called centrum from the same cartilage explains why there is never a neuro-central suture in these batrachians.

During segmentation of the dorsal cartilages mentioned above, which send out the transverse processes of diapophyses, there appears between each two centra an intervertebral cartilage, out of which the articulating condyle of the centrum is formed, and becomes attached either to the vertebra anterior (precoelous type) or posterior (opisthocoelous type) to it, if not remaining as an independent, intervertebral, ossified sphere, as we sometimes find in specimens of Pelobatidae.

In the Caudata and Apoda, cartilage often persists between the vertebrae; this cartilage may become imperfectly separated into a cup-and-ball portion, the cup belonging to the posterior end of the vertebra. In such cases the distinction between amphicoelous and opisthocoelous vertebrae rests merely on a question of ossification, and has occasionally given rise to misunderstandings in the use of these terms.

Amphicoelous (bi-concave) vertebrae are found in the Apoda and in some of the Caudata; opisthocoelous (convexo-concave) vertebrae in the higher Caudata and in the lower Ecaudata; whilst the great majority of the Ecaudata have procoelous (concavo-convex) vertebrae.

All living batrachians, and some of the Stegocephalia, have transverse processes on the vertebrae that succeed the atlas (fig. 4), some of which, in the Caudata, are divided into a dorsal and a ventral portion. Ribs are present in the lower Ecaudata (Discoglossidae and larval Aglossa), but they are never connected with a sternum. It is in fact doubtful whether the so-called sternum of batrachians, in most cases a mere plate of cartilage, has been correctly identified as such. When limbs are present, one vertebra, rarely two (fig. 5) or three, are distinguished as sacral, giving attachment to the ilia. In the Ecaudata, the form of the transverse processes of the sacral vertebra varies very considerably, and has afforded important characters to the systematist. In accordance with the saltatorial habits of the members of this order, the vertebrae, which number from 40 to 60 in the Caudata, to upwards of 200 in the Apoda, have become reduced to 10 as the normal number, viz., eight praecaudal, one sacral and an elongate coccyx or urostyle, formed by coalescence of at least two vertebrae. In some genera this coccyx is fused with the ninth vertebra, and contributes to the