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Show 1895.] LONG-LOST PUTOEIUS AFEICANUS. 129 the then available material, especially as at that date, in regard mammalogy in general, we had far less knowledge of our ignorance than I trust we have since gained. It therefore often seemed legitimate to draw conclusions of a character we should not dare to draw now. But, viewed in the light of recent accessions, they clearly need modification, and, so far as I can venture to state at present, it seems evident:- 1. That there are two distinct forms of Weasel in N . Africa, bearing to each other the same relation in size, and, if they overlap in distribution, no doubt in the struggle for existence, as the European Stoat and Weasel do. 2. That the larger of the two is the true P. africanus, Desm., practically lost to science since its description in 1818 ', and that the smaller only is the species referred to by Lataste and Troues-sart, and, probably, by other authors who have considered " P. africanus " near to or identical with P. boccamela. Of the smaller species the British Museum possesses as yet no authentic Egyptian examples, nor has Dr. Anderson met wish it; but from some measurements of the specimens marked " P. sub-palmatus" in the Berlin Museum, kindly supplied me by Dr. Matschie, it seems probable, as appears below, that the smaller Weasel also occurs in Egypt, in company with the giant species so excellently described by Desmarest three quarters of a century ago and practically lost ever since. It is to this latter that I would refer Mr. Wright's Maltese Weasel, and would congratulate him on his rediscovery of so interesting an animal. So far as the respective ranges of the two species are concerned, P. africanus has apparently not yet been met with in the western half of N . Africa, in Tunis, Algeria, or Morocco, the region studied by Lataste, although it may of course any day turn up there. If it is really absent, so that its only African locality is Egypt, its occurrence in Malta is of still further interest, as will be readily perceived on looking at the relative positions of the localities concerned. On the other hand, the eastern distribution of the smaller species remains somewhat doubtful, for from Dr. Matschie's measurements of the four original specimens contained in Hemprich and Ehrenberg's collection it seems probable that the smaller, as well as the larger, Weasel occurs in Egypt. These measurements, which are given (see p. 130), are those, as Dr. Matschie tells me, of two adult females and two young specimens, all hitherto looked upon as co-types of P. subpalmatus. Now as the description of that animal consists simply of the statement that it is " statura minor " as compared with P. vulgaris, it is evident that the two larger specimens (A. 373 and 1004) cannot have been included in this description, so that the two smaller ones (Nos. 1003 and 1005) should alone be looked upon as the co-types of 1 N. Diet. d!H. N. (2) xix. p. 376. PEOC. ZOOL. Soc-1895, No. IX. 9 |