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Show 1882.] MR. O. THOMAS ON RODENTS FROM PERU. 99 vinces of Jaen and Chota. Tambillo is situated about 5700 feet above the level of the sea, upon the eastern slope of the western chain of the Cordilleras (6° S. lat.). Cutervo.-A town in the province of Chota, department of Caja-marca, about twodays south of Tambillo, on the same slope, 9000 feet. Callacate.-A colony, 4800 feet in altitude, about 8 miles northwest of Cutervo, on the banks of the river Chota, which runs into the Amazon under the name of Chamaya. Chirimoto1.-A colony in the valley of the Huayabamba, a tributary of the Huallaga, in the province of Chachapoyas. It is about 5400 feet above the sea, upon the eastern slope of the eastern chain of the Cordilleras (6° S. lat.). Huambo1.-A plantation in the forest of the same name, to the east of Chachapoyas and Chirimoto, 3700 feet in altitude, on the banks of the river Huambo, a tributary of the Huallaga. All these localities, except Tumbez, are on the northward Andean extension of the Patagonian subregion, as defined by Messrs. Newton and Salvin2; so that we should naturally expect, as indeed turns out to be the case, that most of the species would be the same as those found by M r . Louis Fraser, who collected at places situated in the Ecuadorean part of this same Andean tract. Tumbez is on the southward extension of the Subandean subregion on the Pacific side; but the specimens collected there are too few to draw any deductions from. The chief interest of the collection centres in the fine series of Hesperomys contained in it; for of this difficult genus and the closely allied one Holochilus M . Stolzmann obtained just over 40 specimens. The value of this additional material m a y be perceived when it is remembered how very few of the specimens in the various museums are preserved in spirit, or have their exact localities or habits recorded. O n account, therefore, of the fact that most of the published descriptions have been taken either from stuffed specimens or skins, I have thought it useful to give the measurements of every adult specimen in this collection, even when belonging to comparatively well-known species. It must, moreover, be remembered that from such a locality as Northern Peru very few species of this group can in any sense be called well known ; in fact, of the 11 species of Hesperomys and Holochilus here described, only two, Hesperomys longicaudatus and olivaceus, at all deserve this term; and even of these, additional measurements are much to be desired, as helping to show the range of variation found among the South- American Muridae. Of the 11 species just referred to, only one belongs to Holochilus, the remaining ten being distributed among Calomys, Rhipidomys, and Habrothrix, three of the eight subgenera of Hes- 1 Additional information concerning these two localities may be obtained Prof. Taczanowski's own paper on the birds collected by Mons. Stolzmann (antea, p. 2). 2 Encycl. Brit. ed. 9, iii. p. 744. 7* |
