| OCR Text |
Show 1878.] MR. E. R. ALSTON ON NEOTROPICAL SQUIRRELS. 657 of American Squirrels in the Collection of the British Museum "', in which he recognized twenty-nine Neotropical species as being represented in the national cabinet, nineteen of them being described as new. Last year appeared Messrs. Coues and Allen's exhaustive volume of ' Monographs of North-American Rodentia'2, in which the Squirrels are discussed by the last-named zoologist, who includes the South-American species in his scope. Having had access to considerably larger series of specimens than were available to most previous writers, Mr. Allen was led to reduce the number of valid species of Neotropical Squirrels to ten, with two " subspecies," namely:- Sciurus carolinensis. , var. yucatanensis. collieei. aureigaster. boot hies. hypopyrrhus. He further remarked that he thought that " on the whole the number of species will, by future investigations, be further reduced rather than increased," and that he had erred in recognizing too many species rather than too few. No one who is acquainted with Mr. J. A. Allen's recent memoirs on the geographical variation of species, needs to be reminded of his breadth of view and extreme carefulness in comparison; and in the present monograph these qualities are as conspicuous as ever. In it Mr. Allen has done a great service in reducing the complicated synonymy of the South-American Squirrels to some order ; and if some of his identifications prove to be erroneous, the fault lies in the often totally insufficient or even misleading descriptions of some previous writers. Within the last year I have been able to examine in the British Museum and the Museums of Berlin and Paris, the types of no less than forty-one nominal species of Neotropical Sciuri. In these collections I have also been able to compare much more extensive series of specimens than even Mr. Allen had access to ; and, through his kindness, I have examined typical examples of the species recognized by him. This study has led me to accept many of Mr. Allen's identifications (some of which are sufficiently startling at first sight), and in some instances to carry the reduction of species still further; but it has also enabled me to correct a few errors in his synonymy, and to point out a few apparently valid species with which he was not acquainted. Particularly rich in this group are the Paris and British M u seums ; and the study of their long suites of specimens leads one irresistibly to conclusions which must appear strange to those who only know the extreme links of the chain. Among other things they 1 Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 3rd ser. xx. pp. 415-434. 2 Eep. U.S. Geol. Survey of Territories, vol. xi. Sciurus leucops. cestuans. , var. rufo-niger. tephrogaster. gerrardi. variabilis. |
