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Show 1900.] ON REMAINS OF CYON FROM SARDINIA. 833 in the Natural History Museum ; there is in the Cambridge Zoological Museum a cubitus from the same locality and apparently of the same species. M y purpose in exhibiting them is to draw attention to the fact, in the hope that more characteristic remains will turn up. A species of Macacus, said to be M. cynomolgus, is living in a wild state at Mauritius. According to I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's Catalogue of Primates (pp. 26 & 29), the remains of two species of Macacus from Mauritius, M. sinicus and M. cynomolgus, are in the Paris Natural History Museum. A. Newton, in his 'Dictionary of Birds' (p. 215, footn. 1) states the Mauritius Monkey to be the Macacus pileatus from Ceylon. I have not succeeded in determining accurately the few bones from the Mare aux Songes; all I can say for the present is that they belong to a species of Macacus which is not M. cynomolgus. Monkeys have been known to exist in the Mauritius since 1627- 28 at least, and were, it seems, supposed to have been introduced there by the Portuguese, as mentioned in the following passage in Sir Thomas Herbert's Travels : " The H e (i. e. Mauritius) affoords us withall Goats, Hogges, Beeves and Kine, land Tortoyses (so great that they will creepe with two mens burthens, and seme more for sport, then seruice or solemne Banquet), Rats and Monkeyes, all of which becomes food to such ships as anchor here. They were first brought hither by the Portugall " (Th. Herbert, A Relation of some Veares Travaile, Begunne Anno 1626. Into Af'ri-que and the greater Asia London, 1634, p. 213.) Dr. Forsyth Major made the following remarks on remains of Cyon sardous (Studiati) from a cave at Capo Caccia (N.W. Sardinia) :- The mandible of a member of the Canida? here exhibited has been communicated to me, together with other Pleistocene Vertebrates from Sardinia, by Professor D. Lovisato, of tbe University of Cagliari, who for years has been exploring the fossiliferous deposits of Sardinia with characteristic energy and at considerable personal sacrifice. In the absence of the posterior part of the ramus, whereby it must be left undecided whether a third true molar was present or not, tbe determination of this fossil rests chiefly on the conformation of the talon of the lower carnassial, which is unicuspid and trenchant, whereas in Canis it is composed in the main of a stronger outer and a lesser inner tubercle. Amongst recent Canidse, three genera exhibit the trenchant conformation of the lower carnassial's talon; viz., the South- American Icticyon, the African Lycaon, and the Central and Southeast Asiatic Cyon. There are no a priori grounds why such a feature might not be independently developed in various forms. As to Icticyon, Lund, Huxley, and Winge have insisted upon its close relation in other characters to tbe other South-American |
