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Show 1889.*] DIFFERENT SPECIES OF OTTER. 193 present species Barangia sumatrana, from the original locality of Raffles's specimen, and thus making the latter individual the type of the species. This li Barangia sumatrana" being, as Dr. Anderson has pointed out, the first unused binomial name applied to the species, it must stand as " L. sumatrana, Gray "**. Lastly, for species D, the little clawless Otter, a different name to the well-known "L. leptonyx" most unfortunately has the priority. In the ' Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap' for 17802 Baron F. v. W u r m b gave a description of an Otter found near Batavia which he called the " Grijze Otter," and to this "Grey Otter " Illiger in 1811 applied the name of Lutra cinerea " 3. This name has never been referred to except incidentally among the synonyms of Lutra leptonyx, and even then it is usually without any particulars as to date or place of publication. The reference of L. cinerea to L. leptonyx is unfortunately correct without a shadow of doubt, since in his accounts of the " Grijze Otter," Baron v. W u r m b mentions among other things that it has " ronde nagels " and is only 1 foot 6 inches long, with a tail 1 foot in length, two characters that connect it with L. leptonyx alone of all Otters. Again, Horsfield in his original account of L. leptonyx" himself quotes v. Wurmb's " Grijze Otter " as a synonym, without knowing that 14 years before a Latin name, L,. cinerea, had been applied to it, which name antedated then and must, I am afraid, supersede now the better-known " L. leptonyx." That the " Grijze Otter " is the same as L. leptonyx is also proved by the fact that no other species of the genus is as yet known to inhabit Java, unless the very different sharp-clawed L. barang should after all be found to occur there. Of the names now looked upon as synonyms of one or other of the abOve four species, the following require some explanation :- (1) Lutra aurobrunnea, Hodgs. J. A. S. B. viii. p. 320 (1839). (2) Barangia (?) nepalensis, Gray, P. Z. S. 1865, p. 124; Cat. Carn. B. M . p. 101 (18G9). The type of the first of these descriptions is a distorted and dyed skin, and that of the second an incomplete skull. Both were presented to the Museum by Mr. B. H. Hodgson along with his Nepalese collection, and, as suggested both by Anderson and Blanford, perhaps belong to the same individual. The skin (L. aurobrunnea, Hodgs.) is, I feel sure, that of an example of L. vulgaris, as is shown, in spite of its distorted muzzle, by the sharply-defined limit of the hair growing below the nostrils, where in hairy-nosed Otters (to which the species has been said to be allied) there is no such exact limit. The feet, again, so far as it 1 It may be noted here that Lutra, paleeindica, Falc. and Cautl., from the Siwaliks of N. India, proves, on a direct comparison of the type, to be almost indistinguishable from L. sumatrana. 2 Vol. ii. p. 285 of the 3rd edition, published 1826. 3 Abb. Ak. Berl. 1811, p. 99 (published 1815). 4 Zool. Researches in Java, 1824. |