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Show 466 ON THE DIDELPHYIDJE OF S.E. BRAZIL. [June 5, by Burmeister, plate ix., is really rare, and seems, as I mentioned in m y ' Mammals of Brazil,' p. 146, to be approaching extinction. Till now I have only obtained two specimens in the Serra dos Orgaos, a male and a female, and have not had the good fortune to make any special observations on its habits in freedom. Thus six species of Didelphyidse have come under my observation during a stay of several years in Serra dos Orgaos. Mr. O. Thomas admits 24 species of this family, exclusively American, therefore we note a numeric proportion of 6 : 24, which is j of the whole. I cannot conclude these notes without calling the attention of zoologists to the necessity of cancelling a species of Didelphys, established on the authority of Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neu-wied at the beginning of the present century and still admitted. Mr. 0. Thomas wrrites (Catalogue of Marsupials in the British Museum, p. 366) :- " 23. DIDELPHYS ALBOGUTTATA (White-spotted Opossum). " Bather smaller than D. americana; mouse-grey, with many rows of white spots on its back. Habitat: Brazil (Forest-regiou). Type in the Museum of llio de Janeiro. The above is the only information as yet published about this species, of which I have never seen a specimen." I knew what Prince Maximilian had written about this supposed Didelphys (Beitrage, vol. ii. p. 412), and also Burmeister in 1854 (Syst. Ueb. vol. i. p. 340) and in 1856 (Erlaiit. p. 87); and when in 1884 I assumed the direction of the Zoological Section of the National Museum of Eio de Janeiro1, I submitted to a thorough review the small and very imperfect series of Brazilian Didelphyidse preserved there. I readily found the supposed D. alboguttata, an old specimen certainly dating from the period of D o m Joao VI., and soon recognized it to be a specimen of Dasyurus viverrinus, an Australian marsupial. Considering the intimate relations between the Portuguese colonies in Asia and South America in former times, the presence of this Dasyurus becomes explainable. The specimen still exists and is now properly labelled. It is one of the most droll mistakes that ever happened in zoology, and it is somewhat singular that Prince Maximilian and Burmeister, both good naturalists, showed themselves liable to make such an error. Entirely incomprehensible it is for m e how Burmeister should make the matter still worse by the words:-" Das Tlner lebt im Waldgebiet, und war Hrn. Bescke 2 aus eigner Ansicht bekannt, allein noch nie hatte er es, in den 20 1 This position I lost in 1890, as Fritz Muller and Herman von Ihering lost theirs, through the political changes in Brazil. In spite of seven years' incessant labour, I bad not been able radically to reform the zoological collections and to get them out of the bad state in which I found them. 2 A collector who resided for a long time in Novo Friburgo (Serra dos Orgaos), and whose name is often met with in the different works of German travellers and naturalists. |
