| OCR Text |
Show 1881.] INDIAN SPECIES OF MUS. 543 ears, long soft fur, white belly, and especially its long, white-tipped, hairy tail, cause it to be distinguishable at the first glance from all other Indian Muridae ; and I have had great pleasure in connecting with it the name of Mr. W . T. Blanford, to whose generosity in presenting to the British Museum his fine series of Indian Muridae in spirit, and in lending m e all his Indian skins, I owe the fact of m y having been so far able to work out the Indian species of this most difficult genus of Mammals. The skull of this species (Plate LI. figs. 4 & 5) is very distinct from that of M. alexandrinus. The following are the dimensions of the skull of the adult male of M. Blanfordi and of that of a specimen of M. alexandrinus var. rufescens, which, being of precisely the same length, is particularly suitable for the purpose of comparison :- Mus blanfordi tf. Mus rufescens1 rj. Kadapa. Calcutta. Total length 1*65 1*65 Greatest breadth *8 *8 Length of lower jaw2 *96 *96 Nasal bones *68 *58 Breadth between orbits .... *28 *26 Anterior palatine foramina . . *35 '30 Incisors to 1st upper molars.. '44 '44 Breadth of interparietal .... "45 "41 The proportions of the two skulls would thus seem to be almost exactly the same, that of M. Blanfordi having rather longer anterior palatine foramina, and broader interparietal bones. The following differences, however, form a ready means of distinguishing the skulls of the two species :- In M. rufescens the fronto-parietal sutures form together a very obtuse angle forward, sometimes almost a straight line across the skull; but in M. Blanfordi they form but little more than a right angle, the frontal extending in the middle line much further backwards between the parietals. The shape of the interparietal bone is very different in the two skulls. In M. rufescens it is more or less five- or six-sided, with the angles well developed ; but in M. Blanfordi the bone, as m a y be seen in the figure, has only two distinct angles, namely those at the outer ends of the bone, its front and back edges being simple curves. In the above-mentioned points the two skulls of M. blanfordi both agree perfectly ; but one of the characters mentioned in the original description is now found to be a question of age. This is the shape of the front edge of the anterior zygoma-root, which was said to be slanting instead of perpendicular. The older skull, however, has this edge quite upright, as in other Rats; and I have therefore had 1 This term var2 ;rFurfoeirsic tehnes ,ci osan shd ebyreleie nsug st eomd ot rihnes tmceoansdvt e oanfni tetenhrtei ofmroo rpr oeir ndctio nroraier cytt hu efs eoa.rc tmu aMlu bso nael.e xandrinus, |
