viscous fluid, resembling that of snails, eels, and some salamanders. Specimens are rare in Europe owing to the readiness with which it decomposes, breaking down into a flaky mass in the spirits in which it is attempted to preserve it.

The creature is about the length and thickness of an ordinary round desk ruler, a little flattened before and rounded behind. It is brownish, with a pale stripe along either side. The skin is furrowed into 350 circular folds, in which are imbedded minute scales. The head is tolerably distinct, with a double row of fine curved teeth for seizing the insects and worms on which it is supposed to live.

Naturalists are most desirous that the habits and metamorphoses of this creature should be carefully ascertained, for great doubts have been entertained as to the position it is entitled to occupy in the chain of creation.

Batrachians. In the numerous marshes formed by the overflowing of the rivers in the plains of the low country, there are many varieties of frogs, which, both by their colours and by their extraordinary size, are calculated to excite the surprise of a stranger. In the lakes around Colombo and the still water near Trincomalie, there are huge creatures of this family, from six to eight inches in length', of an olive hue, deepening into brown on the back and yellow on the under side. A Kandyan species, recently described, is of much smaller dimensions, but distinguished by its brilliant colouring, a beautiful grass green above and deep orange underneath.2

A Singhalese variety of the Rana cutipora? and the Malabar bull-frog, Hylarana Malabarica. A frog named by BLYTH Rana ro

busta, proves to be a Ceylon spe-
cimen of the R. cutipora.
2 R. Kandiana, Kelaart.

1

In the shrubberies around my house at Colombo the graceful little tree-frogs were to be found in great numbers, sheltered under broad leaves to protect them from the scorching sun;-some of them utter a sharp metallic sound at night, similar to that produced by smacking the lips.

In the gardens and grounds toads 2 crouch in the shade, and pursue the flies and minute coleoptera. In Ceylon, as in Europe, these creatures suffer from the bad renown of injecting a poison into the wound inflicted by their bite. The main calumny is confuted by the fact that no toad has yet been discovered furnished with any teeth whatsoever; but the obnoxious repute still attaches to the milky exudation sometimes perceptible from glands situated on either side behind the head; nevertheless experiments have shown, that though acrid, the secretions of the toad are incapable of exciting more than a slight erythema on the most delicate skins. The smell is, however, fetid and offensive, and hence toads are less exposed to the attacks of carnivorous animals and of birds than frogs, in which such glands do not exist.

In the class of Reptiles, those only are included in the order of Batrachians which undergo a metamorphosis before attaining maturity; and as they offer the only example amongst Vertebrate animals of this marvellous transformation, they are justly considered as the lowest in the scale, with the exception of fishes, which remain during life in that stage of development which is only the commencement of existence to a frog.

1 Polypedates maculatus, Gray. 2 Bufo melanostictus, Schneid. * In Ceylon this error is as old as the third century, B. C., when, as the Mahawanso tells us, the wife

of "King Asoka attempted to destroy the great bo-tree (at Magadha) with the poisoned fang of a toad."- Ch. xx. p. 122.

In undergoing this change, it is chiefly the organs of respiration that manifest alteration. In its earliest form the young batrachian, living in the water, breathes as a fish does by gills, either free and projecting as in the water-newt, or partially covered by integument as in the tadpole. But the gills disappear as the lungs gradually become developed: the duration of the process being on an average one hundred days from the time the eggs were first deposited. After this important change, the true batrachian is incapable any longer of living continuously in water, and either betakes itself altogether to the land, or seeks the surface from time to time to replenish its exhausted lungs.1

The change in the digestive functions during metamorphosis is scarcely less extraordinary; frogs, for example, which feed on animal substances at maturity, subsist entirely upon vegetable when in the condition. of larvæ, and the subsidiary organs undergo remarkable development, the intestinal canal in the earlier stage being five times its length in the later one.

Of the family of tailed batrachians, Ceylon does not furnish a single example; but of those without this appendage, the island, as above remarked, affords many varieties; seven distinguishable species pertaining to the genus rana, or true frogs with webs to the hind feet; two to the genus bufo, or true toads, and five to the Polypedates, or East Indian "tree-frogs;" besides a few others in allied genera. The "tree-frog," whose

1 A few Batrachians, such as the Siren of Carolina, the Proteus of Illyria, the Axolotl of Mexico, and the Menobranchus of the North American Lakes, retain their gills during life; but although provided

with lungs in mature age, they are not capable of living out of the water. Such batrachians form an intermediate link between reptiles and fishes.

toes are terminated by rounded discs which assist it in climbing, possesses, in a high degree, the faculty of changing its hues; and one as green as a leaf to-day, will be found grey and spotted like the bark to-morrow. One of these beautiful little creatures, which had seated itself on the gilt pillar of a lamp on my dinner-table, became in a few minutes scarcely distinguishable in colour from the or-molu ornament to which it clung.

List of Ceylon Reptiles.

I am indebted to Dr. Gray and Dr. Günther, of the British Museum, for a list of the reptiles of Ceylon; but many of those new to Europeans have been carefully described by the late Dr. Kelaart in his Prodromus Fauna Zeylanica and its appendices, as well as in the 13th vol. Magaz. Nat. Hist. (1854).

NOTE. The following species are peculiar to Ceylon (and the genera Ceratophora, Otocryptis, Uropeltis, Aspidura, Cercaspis, and Haplocercus would appear to be similarly restricted); - Lygosoma fallax; Trimesurus Ceylonensis, T. nigromarginatus; Megæra Trigonocephala; Trigonocephalus hypnalis; Daboia elegans; Rhinophis punctatus, Rh. homolepis, Rh. planiceps, Rh. Blythii, Rh. melanogaster; Uropeltis grandis; Silybura Ceylonica; Cylindrophis maculata; Aspidura brachyorrhos; Haplocercus Ceylonensis; Oligodon sublineatus; Cynophis Helena; Cyclophis calamaria; Dipsadomorphus Ceylonensis; Cercaspis carinata; Ixalus variabilis, I. leucorhinus, I. poecilopleurus; Polypedates microtympanum, P. eques.