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Show 410 MR. G. E. H. BARRETT-HAMILTON Oft [Apr. ^ applies to some form of Mus sylvaticus1. His description is certainly borne out by one of his specimens now in the British Museum of Natural History (no. 45.11.15.17), which, although an old and faded skin, and of little use for a careful and accurate examination of its characters, undoubtedly belonged to a Mus sylvaticus-hke Mouse. I cannot distinguish the skull by any cranial or dental characters. The ears and feet of this specimen would appear to be rather shorter than in ordinary examples, as is also the case with the dimensions of two specimens in alcohol from the Gerbe collection as given by Mons. F. Lataste. Lastly, Herr Herluf Winge, to whom I wrote for information regarding the specimens in the Danish Museum at Copenhagen, has been good enough to inform2 m e that the Museum possesses four Icelandic specimens of Mus sylvaticus, " two skins and two spirit-specimens, all of them looking very ordinary, quite resembling Danish specimens." The measurements sent me by Herr Winge are not smaller than those of average sylvaticus. There can be little doubt that the lield-mouse of Iceland is very close to that of Europe, and can only be regarded as subspecifically distinct. 10. MUS SYLVATICUS HAYI. Mus hayi, G. B. Waterbouse, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1837, p. 76. Type from Tangier, Morocco, no. 52.9.13.9 (British Museum Collection), in alcohol, from the collection of the Zoological Society of London. Nomenclature. Mus hayi Waterhouse is simply Mus sylvaticus of Morocco. Distinguishing Characteristics. This subspecies can only be described at present from its negative characters. It is not a large bright Mouse like 31. princeps, but its size exceeds that of 31. s. intermedins of England, and it has in addition the tail usually longer than the head and body. The skull commonly reaches a length of 26 mm. Distribution. For the present I am obliged to include under this name the Long-tailed Field-mice of Morocco, Spain, Portugal, and the neighbouring countries, including those of the Mediterranean islands. Of these I have seen specimens from Corsica and Sicily, the latter of which, however, have a name readv for them in Mus dichrurus Bafinesque. Later investigations will probably show the existence of more than one subspecies in these regions. Thus some specimens from Villabra, Gahcia, Spain, are small and very red ; they come from a height of 1300 metres, and probably indicate the existence of more than one subspecies in Spain. 1 Although Euppell, who seems to have examined the ordinal specimen of Thienemann has declared it to be a Mus musculus, a piece of information for which I a m indebted to Herr H. Winge inclination tor 2 In lift, of 14th April, 1899. |