ABSTRACT
From the structure of most of these animals and their consequent habits of life, circumscribed as they are for the most part in their locomotive powers, it might reasonably be predicated that they would, upon the whole, exhibit as distinct examples of restriction, with regard to their geographical boundaries, as any class of vertebra ted animals; and that the intervention of seas and of mountains would be sufficient to limit the range of a species. Such is in fact usually the case; and not only is the same species not found in the Old and New Continents, but, with very few exceptions, not even on the opposite sides of the South American Continent, in which range Mr Darwin’s discoveries have principally been made. The occurrence, however, of Bufo Chilensis at Rio Janeiro and at Buenos Ayres on the eastern, and at Valparaiso and the Archipelago of Chonos on the western side of the continent, shows an extent of distribution exceedingly unusual if not absolutely unparalleled in this family. It is, however, still possible that further and more extended researches into the characters of the animals in question, and an examination of individuals from each locality at various ages, may prove that there are two species, which have been confounded with each other, and the anomaly may thus be removed.
