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Show 1880.] MR. O. THOMAS ON MAMMALS FROM ECUADOR. 393 6. On Mammals from Ecuador. By OLDFIELD THOMAS, F.Z.S., Assistant in the Zoological Department, British Museum. [Received April 19, 1880.] (Plate XXXVIII.) The collection to which this paper chiefly refers was brought from Ecuador by Mr. Clarence Buckley, together with a large number of birds and other animals obtained by him during his four years' residence in that country. It consists of 141 specimens, belonging to 38 species. The specimens are all in an excellent state of preservation ; and a nearly complete set has been selected for the British Museum. I have also included in m y notes a small collection from the same region received by the British Museum from Mr. Illingworth, containing 12 specimens belonging to 10 species-the total number of species being thus increased to 41. The collection only contains one undoubted new species, Bassaricyon alleni, an animal especially interesting both by its being the only known specimen of the genus which shows the external characters, and also by the remarkable instance of mimicry which it exhibits. Two of the Squirrels are also interesting as forming the long-expected links between S. eestuans, L., and S. griseogenys, Gray. On the whole this collection confirms the correctness of the views expressed by Messrs. Newton and Salvin on the division of the Neotropical Region into subregions, as published in the new edition of the * Encyclopaedia Britannica.'1 In their opinion the eastern part of Ecuador belongs to the Amazonian subregion ; and we therefore find in this collection a very great preponderance of Amazonian forms, with a few species belonging to other subregions, such as Mycetes niger, which is a South-Brazilian type, Tapirus roulini, a Sub-Andean, and Cariacus ruflnus, the range of which, according to Sir Victor Brooke2, extends from Guatemala to Ecuador. The only papers hitherto published on the Mammals of Ecuador, so far as I am aware, are those by Mr. Tomes3, referring to the specimens obtained by Mr. Fraser at Gualaquiza and Palatanga. These papers, however, deal almost entirely with the Chiroptera and Rodentia, in which orders Mr. Buckley's collection is especially deficient, so that I am unable to draw any comparisons between the two. The localities and dates at which the collections were made were as follows:- Sarayacu4, on the Bobonasa river, Upper Pastasa river. Copataza river, about 50 miles S.E. of Sarayacu, a tributary of the Pastasa. The specimens from this locality were obtained between December 1877 and February 1878. » Vol. iii. p. 744. 2 P. Z. S. 1878, p. 925. 3 P. Z. S. 1858, p. 546 ; 1860, pp. 211 & 260. 4 This must not be confounded with the far larger and better known Sarayacu on the TJcayali in Peru. |