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Show 1 18 DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE BRADYPODIDA. [May 2, b. The male with a small patch of soft white hair on the back. 8. ARCTOPITHECUS FLACCIDUS. (Plate XXXVII.) Fur elongate, flaccid, grey, very indistinctly marbled with white ; under-fur very abundant, white and black in spots and blotches. Skull with a short broad nose. Lower jaw thick, short, high, thickened in front and very blunt ; angle of lower jaw produced beyond the back edge of the condyle, rather broad (P. Z. S. 1849, t. xi. f. 1 a). Bradypus tridactylus!, Prince Maximilian, Abbildungen. Female and young. Bradypus ai, Wagler, Isis, 1831, p. 610 ! Bradypus pallidus, Wagner, Suppl. iv. p. 143? Arctopithecus flaccidus, Gray, P. Z. S. 1849, p. 72, t. xi. f. I (skull); Cat. Edentata, p. 365. Hab. Venezuela (Dyson) ; Para, (J. P. G. Smith). The figure of the skull, t. xi. f. 1, in the P. Z. S. 1849, represents the angle of the lower jaw as slender and acute ; but the underside of the angle represented has been broken off, and the smaller figure, t. xi. f. 1 a, represents the true form of this part. There is a skeleton in the Museum which I believe belongs to this species. The two specimens in the Museum are probably males; but we have no means of determining the fact. They are both peculiar for the long, soft, flaccid hair, of a dull whitish-grey colour, without any indication of white or black markings, being only slightly grizzled by some of the hairs being whiter than the rest. There is a very abundant, rather long, very soft, blackish brown under-fur, and only a slight indication of a broad, short, blackish dorsal streak seen at the base of a deep concavity in the fur between the shoulders. This streak is much more visible in the specimen from Venezuela than in the smaller one brought by m y son-in-law from Para. Prince Maximilian of Neuwied, in his ' Abbildungen,' has given a beautiful figure of a female Bradypus tridactylus, and its young one on its back, which is probably intended for A. flaccidus; for it has the long flaccid hair of this division ; and he says the female has the longitudinal black streak in the woolly hair, and that the male has a longitudinal white line on each side of the back. Does he mean by this the small white central spot of soft hair between the shoulders, which is characteristic of this species ? Wagner refers this figure to his Bradypus pallidus; and the specific character may be only a travesty of Prince Maximilian's description, where he changes the white longitudinal streak into the back being longitudinally white-spotted, observing there is no orange fulvous dorsal spot, not thinking that the white stripes replace this patch in the other species-that is to say, if the figure represents A. flaccidus, which I think is probable ; and it is the best published figure of the genus. L'Ai, Cuvier, Oss. Foss. vol. v. t. vi. & vii. (skeleton and skull). A. problematicus, Gray, P. Z. S. 1849, p. 73, t. xi. f. 5. Bradypus problematicus, Gerrard, Cat. Bones M a m . p. 290. |