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Show 1 9 0 4 .] RODENT DINOMYS BRANICKII. 161 approaching steps of the keeper, it forms the resolution to move with slow gait, expecting some food, evidently governing its movements as much by hearing and smell as by sight. It is not easily irritated, and permits one to stroke and to scratch its head and back, and only occasionally manifests its displeasure by a low guttural growl. I have never yet observed a manifest intention to bite. When let out of the cage it makes no attempt to escape, and limits its excursions to an exploration of the immediate neighbourhood in search of something to eat. It occasionally scratches itself rapidly with its long claws, which is the only occasion on which it manifests a capacity for rapid movements when required. One thing not yet definitely verified by us is its proclivity for digging, the development of the claws at least leading to the supposition that the animal is well fitted for that purpose. The amiable relations always existing between mother and son prepossess one most favourably as to the natural disposition of the animals *. This phlegmatic disposition seems to me to be a very precarious endowment for the struggle for life; and considering the evident advantages which result to the smaller domestic rodents, such as rats and mice, from their nervously active constitution, it would not be strange if the species should tend to disappear. The apparent rarity of Dinomys may possibly find its explanation in the consequences of such a psychological endowment in a more nervous environment; but it is also possible that this rarity is because of the circumstance that the real habitat of the species has not yet been clearly ascertained. As matters now stand, it would be justifiable to suppose that the true home of Dinomys is not properly in the Peruvian Andes, and that the first specimen found there was merely a stray individual, and that its actual habitat may rather be located in the almost unexplored regions of the eastern slopes and tablelands of the Bolivian and Peruvian foot-hills bordering on Brazil, including geographically the headwaters of the rivers Acre, Purus, and Jurua. I shall soon have occasion to show that a scientific exploration of the region above described will result in a multitude of great surprises both from a zoological and a palfeontological point of view, of which the interesting rediscovery of the lost Dinomys branickii is only a first instalment. Para, 7th April, 1904. P.S.-Unfortunately, just before I send this note, the older Dinomys, the mother, has died owing to a difficult parturition. One foetus was born under normal conditions, while the other, apparently on account of its abnormal position, could not be * After this portrayal of the animal's peaceful character, it will not seem strange that the account of the capture of the first individual in 1873 in the Peruvian mountains, as furnished by Prof. Peters, according to which it was deemed necessary to deal two powerful sabre-strokes to lay the terrible monster low, always amuses me. P r o c . Z o o l . S o c .-1904, You II. No. XI. 11 |