OCR Text |
Show 1903.] MAMMALS FROM THE SOUDAN. 297 Size small, and feet short. General colour above soft sandy buff, slightly lined 011 the back with the dark tips to the hairs, but without any marked darker dorsal area. Along the back the bases of the hairs are plumbeous, but laterally, still within the sandy area, the hairs are broadly ringed with white subterminally, though this colour does not show on the surface. Under surface pure sharply defined white as usual. Cheeks, a prominent patch above and behind each eye, and another behind the ear white. Whole of fore limb white, hind limb with a sandy line down its outer side, the inner side and whole of feet snowy white ; palms and soles thickly hairy. Tail short for this group, pale sandy above, darkening towards the pencilled end ; white below. Skull unfortunately broken in the single specimen. Molars markedly smaller and lighter than in the common Soudanese G. pygargus. Dimensions of the type :- Head and body 87 111111. ; tail 100 ; hind foot (s. u.) 24 ; ear 11. Length of upper molar series 3*7. Hah. and type as given above. This little Gerbille is distinguished from its neighbour G. pygargus by its smaller size and shorter tail. Its close resemblance to Dipodillus stigmonyx has already been noted. 1 1 . A r v ic a n th is d u n n i , sp. n. 103. $ . Kaga Hills, W. Kordofan (about 120 miles W. of El Obeid). 20 November, 1902. " Dug out of reddish sandy cultivation soil, from among the natives' crops of dukhan."-H. K. D. A many-striped species of the A . barbarus group ; allied to A . zebra, but smaller, paler, and with the light and dark stripes less contrasted. Size small, the smallest of the group. General pale groundcolour buff, the lateral darker stripes brown instead of black. Head coarsely grizzled buffy and brown. Central dorsal stripe beginning on the crown, very narrow, blackish, but not so deep a black as in A. zebra ; outside this there are 011 each side five uninterrupted buffy stripes, separated from each other by broad brown bands, each of which is divided down the centre into two by an interrupted band of light, an arrangement essentially as in the other species. The light spaces are throughout clear buff, and the dark lines bi-own, a clear buffy line passing along below the outermost dark line and edging the pure white of the belly. In A. zebra the outer lines at least are white, only those near the spine being buffy. Eye-ring buffy. Ears dull ocliraceous, without darker marking. Arms and legs pale buffy, becoming white on the fingers and toes. Tail well-haired : dull ocliraceous above, with a narrow and inconspicuous mesial line of black ; whitish below. Skull conspicuously smaller than in A. zebra and the other species of the group, with rather larger bull* ; incisors narrower, but molars rather larger in proportion. |