OCR Text |
Show 456 DR. C. I. FORSYTH MAJOR ON [APr- X^» 452mni.; basal length 410; length of horns on anterior curve 487 ; basal circumference 273. Hah. (of type). Maanja River, about 30 miles west of Kampala, towards the Albert Lake, Uganda. Type. Old Male. Mounted head and skin of body. B. M. No. 4.4.19.1. Presented by Mr. F. J. Jackson. Killed March 1902. Mr. Jackson had only seen this one specimen, a solitary male, which had possibly wandered out of the normal habitat of its kind. The typical locality of B. jacksoni was Northern Kavi rondo, but the exact limits of its range were not as yet known, nor the extent to which it graded into the B. lelwel of the Upper Nile. The markings of the present specimen were so striking, and so entirely unmatched within the genus, that, in spite of the nearness of its habitat to that of the true jacksoni, Mr. Thomas thought there was no alternative but to give it a distinctive name. Dr. C. I. Forsyth Major, F.Z.S., exhibited some remains of Anthracotherium magnum Cuv. (Plate XXIX.), obtained by Mi-. Oldfield Thomas, F.R.S., from a lignite-deposit in Majorca (Balearic Is.), and made the following remarks:- When Mr. Oldfield Thomas informed me, some years ago, of his intended visit to the Balearic Islands *, I requested him to inquire at the lignite-mines of Majorca after remains of Anthracotherium and other mammals, having reasons for supposing that remains of the genus just named had formerly been found there. In the Museo Civico of Milan is, or was, preserved a jaw of Anthracotherium of the size of A. magnum, with an undoubtedly wrong label attached to it. The late geologist E. Spreafico, to whom I pointed it out many years ago, thought it to be a specimen brought back by Dr. Cristoforo Bellotti from an excursion to the Balearic Islands, and presented to the Museum, but afterwards believed to have been lost in some unaccountable manner. The circumstance, although dating back over thirty years, had not escaped m y memory, because I found out afterwards that the lignites in Majorca are generally ascribed to a much older horizon than the one revealed now with certainty by the presence in them of Anthracotherium magnum. The island of Majorca, the largest of the Balearics, was at one time occupied by an immense lake, the longest diameter of which has been estimated at 80 kilometres, almost equalling that of the whole island (92 kilometres) f. About the geological horizon of this lacustrine formation, con- * See Oldtield Thomas, " On the Mammals of the Balearic Islands," Proc. Zool Soc. London, 1901, vol. i. pp. 35-44. t H. Hermite, " Etudes geologiques sur les iles Baleares," prem. partie, p. 201 |