In the spring the Spade-footed Toads take to the water for about a week, and the male's call-note is an ever-repeated clucking sound, which can also be produced under water, with the mouth shut, the air being shifted backwards and forwards through the larynx. The male grasps his mate below the waist; the eggs are combined into one thick string, which is about 18 inches long, and is wound round and between the leaves and stalks of water-plants. The eggs measure 2-2.5 mm., and are very numerous, a large string containing several thousands. The larvae are hatched on the fifth or sixth day in a very unripe condition. They are only 4 mm. long, quite black, and still devoid of gills and tail. They attach themselves to the empty gelatinous egg-membranes, which they possibly live upon. On the following day the tail begins to grow; two days later fringed external gills sprout out and serve for about ten days, when they in turn give way to new, inner gills. The little tadpoles then leave their moorings and become independent. The hind-limbs appear in the ninth week, the fore-limbs in the twelfth. At the age of three months they begin to leave the water. The most remarkable feature is the enormous size of the full-grown tadpole, the body of which is as large as a pigeon's egg; the usual total length, including the tail, amounts to about 4 inches or 100 mm., but occasionally regular monsters are found. This was the case some thirty years ago, when the Berlin Museum received a number of tadpoles, the largest of which measured nearly 7 inches. They were found in the month of December near Berlin, in a deep clay-pit with high, steep walls, so that the tadpoles were prevented from leaving the water. Similarly hemmed-in broods probably hibernate in the water under the ice, and such instances have been recorded. Normally they metamorphose into the much smaller toad within the same year. _P. cultripes._–This is the Spade-foot of the whole of Spain and Portugal and of the southern and western parts of France. It is similar in habits to _P. fuscus_, from which it differs but slightly. The tarsal spur is black, and there is a parieto-squamosal bridge which completely roofs over the temporal fossa {164}and closes the orbit behind.–Boulenger has discovered the rare, individual occurrence of minute teeth on the parasphenoid and on the pterygoids of this species. These teeth are unquestionably the last reminiscences of a condition almost entirely superseded in the recent Anura. _P. syriacus_ from Asia Minor and Syria agrees with _P. cultripes_ in the cranial configuration, but has the yellow or brown spur of _P. fuscus_. [Illustration: FIG. 33.–_Pelobates cultripes_, Spade-foot Toad, × 1, and under surface of left foot.]