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Show 1890.] SOUTH-AMERICAN CANID.E. 103 slenderer beast of the two, and that it has a fuller and softer coat; but the colour of the limbs he regards as the great character, the reddish-yellow tract being separated sharply from the grey body by a transverse blackish mark. The skull of Burmeister's C. griseus is much smaller than that of his C. azarce, but the difference is by no means greater than I have met with between specimens of undoubtedly the same species of other kinds oiCanidce. He speaks, indeed, of a distinction in the length of the premaxillse, but his plate does not agree with the statement. The dentition of both is extremely similar. In his ' Reise durch La Plata,' p. 407, he gives a table of the dimensions of the teeth in most of the species considered in this paper. The combined length of the upper molars is there stated to be 17 in C. azarce and 13 in C. griseus; while the length of the fourth upper premolar is 15 in C. azarce and 12 in C. griseus; or the premolar to the molars as 100 to 112 in C. azarce and as 100 to 108 in C. griseus, a difference which is practically no difference at all. No one, I venture to think, who has worked at the varieties of the Wolf and the Fox, can attach great importance to a distinction reposing upon the limbs being "grey" or "reddish yellow," or upon a softening of the colour of the soles of the feet from a blackish brown into a reddish brown. There remains the transverse blackish band across the proximal part of the limbs. But this cannot constitute a distinctive character, for it exists most distinctly on the hind limbs of the type of C. fulvipes, where it sharply marks off the red colour below it. The same is the case in the skin of C. azarce, No. 55. 12. 24. 238, and to a less degree in the skin brought by Burnett and Fitzroy from Patagonia. The teeth not only agree with those of C. azarce, but the teeth of these two forms agree in differing very markedly from another South- American form which I take to be represented by the C. vetulus of Burmeister. I cannot, on the evidence before us, accept the C. griseus of Burmeister as an established species, especially on the strength of a single skin ' and skulk I would provisionally regard it as a variety of C. azarce coming from Sandy Point in the Straits of Magellan. The C. gi-iseus of Gray must be simply ignored. (4) Canis patagonicus is a species which was proposed by Philippi (Archiv f. Natur. xxxii. (1866) i. vol. p. 116) for a skin from the Straits of Magellan without a skull. He rests its distinctness from C. azartx on its shorter tail; its hair being shorter and not so thick, and of a yellowish-grey colour ; its bristly hairs being softer and whiter; the dark colour of the chin extending back " six lines " further beyond the angle of the mouth; the limbs being less white externally; the hairs of the tail being shorter (as well as the tail itself), with its under-fur ashy grey instead of yellow and having its black hairs so disposed as to form about ten transverse rings alternating with white, and the claws being pure-pointed, indicating that the animal did not burrow. . x Burmeister (Erliiut. p. 50) uses the expression "Mein Exemplar stanunt von Punta de las Arenas." |