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Show 1870.J PROF. A. NEWTON ON CRICETUS NIGRICANS. 331 I am enabled to add that the diagnosis then made of the species is quite confirmed, and that the specimen was very nearly, but not quite, adult, the epiphyses of the bodies of the vertebrae having become united throughout the caudal and the greater part of the lumbar, but not in the thoracic and cervical regions. The transverse processes of the cervical vertebrae, from the second to the sixth inclusive, are joined at their extremities, so as to form complete rings. The seventh has no inferior process. There are fifteen pairs of ribs ; the first with a very short capitular process, the second and third with long capitular processes ; the fifteenth rudimentary on both sides, as in the skeleton now in the Alexandra Park. The sternum is in the form of a short broad cross, the xiphoid process being less developed than usual; its greatest breadth is 23 inches, its length 15^ inches. The skeleton belongs to Mr. D. Harris, of the " Museum Gardens," near Kingston Church, Portsea, where, when the preparation of the bones is completed, it is to be mounted and exhibited. 8. On Cricetus nigricans as a European Species. By A L F R E D N E W T O N , M.A., V.P.Z.S., &c. (Plate XXVI.) The skin of a small Rodent, brought from Turkey in Europe, and lately presented to the Museum of the University of Cambridge by Mr. Thomas Edward Buckley, B.A., of Trinity College, and a Fellow of this Society, was clearly of a species not generally included as a member of the European fauna by writers who have made that subject their especial study. My friend Mr. Edward Alston, who has paid particular attention to the smaller mammals, on the specimen being shown to him, speedily recognized in it the Cricetus nigricans of Brandt; but as he arrived at this conclusion only from the description given in Wagner's Supplement to Schreber's great work *, and as, so far as I know, no other examples of the species exist in this country, I thought it safest to forward the specimen to Professor Peters, who has kindly informed me that, except being brighter in colour, he did not find the least difference between it and tvpes of that species in the Berlin Museum. I accordingly now have the pleasure of exhibiting the specimen and of offering a few remarks on the species. Cricetus nigricans, Brandt, was first described, in 1832, by Menetries, in his well-known ' Catalogue 'f, as having been procured hy him on the mountains of the Caucasus. In a review of this work, three years later, Dr. Gloger J expressed his opinion that it was not * Die Saugethiere u. s. w. von Schreber, Supplementband, iii. p. 451. Er-langen: 1843. f Catalogue raisonne des objets de zoologie recueillies clans une Voyage au Caucase, &c. p. 22. St. Petersbourg : 1832. J Jahrbucher fiir wissenschaftliche Kritik, No. 88 (May 1835) pp. 718, 719. |