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Show 392 MR. G. E. H. BARRETT-HAMILTON ON [^Pr- 3, (besides several specimens in alcohol) 7 skins from Co. Dublin and the north of Co. Wicklow, 7 from Co. Louth, two without locality, and an immature skin from Co. Galway. From the Channel Islands I have a set collected by Mr. W . Eagle Clarke on Alderney l; while from the Continent of Europe, its Islands, and North Africa, I have seen 169 specimens (which form part either of m y own collection or of that of the British Museum of Natural History) from the following countries :- Morocco 11, Portugal 9, Spain (various localities) 10, France (various localities) 18, Belgium 10, Holland 5, Denmark 5, Scandinavia 6, Germany 60 (from various localities), Lithuania 1, Slavonia 16, Switzerland 11, Italy 4, Corsica 2, Sicily 2, Algeria 1, Boumania 44, Montenegro 1, Bussia 1, Iceland 1. Lastly, there is the series of 66 specimens kindly sent over for my examination by Mr. G. S. Miller, Junior, wiiich comprises 16 from Brunswick, Germany : 9 from Bergen, Norway; 2 from Upsala, Sweden ; 17 from Switzerland; 17 from Warenne, Belgium ; and 5 from Cadillac-sur-Garonne, France. Of Asiatic material I have examined 25 specimens from a number of localities, the most eastern of which is Kuatun, in North-wrest Fokien, China, whence Messrs. C. B. Bickett & J. D. La Touche have recently sent a fine series to the Natural History Museum. General Remarks.-It is extremely hard to deal satisfactorily with the various phases of Mus sylvaticus. Considerable as has been the material at my command, far more so probably than has fallen to the lot of any other naturalist to examine, it is still impossible to trace out with anything like completeness the variations of this species even in Western Europe. Mus sylvaticus occurs everywhere in such abundance and is so easily caught that it might be thought that no animal would be easier to wrork out; but this is not the case, for in proportion to the very facility with which it is captured, a great deal of the material is young and untrustworthy. At present, therefore, I do not see m y way to catalogue with anything like completeness the various recognizable subspecies and individual variations. All that I can do is to describe a few of the more extreme forms, leaving the majority of the intermediates for further consideration. In dealing with the variations of an animal, we have two distinct types to treat of, viz., those which are spasmodic and affect only he individual, and those which are geographical and characteristic of all, or of the majority of, the individuals of a particular region or locality. The former do not directly concern the student of geographical variation ; the latter are the species and subspecies, according to the degree of difference which they show, of a paper like the present one. The occurrence of starting variations, either individual or geographical, seems almost foreign to the constitution of 31us sylvaticus, yet it is not deficient in equally interesting, although less conspicuous, developments. In this respect, what I stated in m y previous paper on the subject may still, broadly 1 See Proc. Zool. Soc. Feb. 7, 1899, p. 82, footnote. |