OCR Text |
Show 1897.] FROM NYASALAND. 929 Northern Nyasaland, there are three examples decidedly different in colour from Mount Malosa, just to the north of Zimba, a locality where Mr. Whyte states that a great many peculiar forms are found. Size and general characters as in ordinary Zambesi examples of M. brachyrhynchus, but the upper colour, instead of being pale rufous, is, in ordinary lights, grizzled greyish or mouse-colour, not far from the "hair-brown"of Bidgway. Looked at with the light behind one, and with the animal's head pointing almost directly away (a position which turns the pale rufous of M. brachyrhynchus into a silvery lilac), the colour turns nearly a pure ashy grey. Sides buffy, belly white. On the rump the hairs surrounding the naked area at the root of the tail are pale rufous, exactly as in M. brachyrhynchus, but owing to the difference in the dorsal colour they preseut a marked contrast to the rest, so that the rump is conspicuously different to the back. Face, like back, greyer than in M. brachyrhynchus; the whitish ring round the eye is slightly interrupted in the centre above, and broadly so at the posterior canthus, where a blackish streak or smear is formed, running backwards from the eye ; the hairs in the same position in M. brachyrhynchus are not darker than the rest of the face. Skull apparently not markedly different from that of M. brachyrhynchus, allowing for the range of variation found in that animal. It is, perhaps, rather narrower across the brain-case, the nasals are slightly broader for their middle third, and the teeth, especially the premolars, seem to average rather smaller. Measurements of the type, an adult 2 in skin :- Head and body (stretched) 144 mm.; tail 103; hind foot 29; ear 17*5. Skull: basal length 29*8 ; greatest length 34 ; greatest breadth 17*4; interorbital breadth 5*6; breadth of brain-case 13*4; front of i.1 to back of last molar (m.2) 16*5. Hab. Mount Malosa, 5500 ft. Coll. 22 Nov., 1896. Type. B.M. No. 97. 10.1. 41. In his report on one of these specimens sent to him for examination, Dr. Matschie tells me that the four Tette Macroscelides examples in the Berlin Museum are very variable in colour, ranging from the ordinary rufous of M. brachyrhynchus to a much darker shade, and it is owing to this fact that I now consider the Malosa form as merely a subspecies. The type of M. fuscus, as already noted, is a melanistic example, still in milk-dentition, of the ordinary Zambesi form. That it is not M. b. mulosce is shown at once by the dark colour of its belly and eye-rings. 15. CROCLDURA (CR.), sp. inc. a. 6 • Fort Hill, July 1896. A large species, apparently allied to C. anchietce, Boc. 16. CROCLDURA (CR.), sp. inc. a-c. Kombe, Masuku Bange, 7000 ft., July 1896. d, e. Nyika Plateau, 6000-7000 ft., June, July, 1896. |