CARNIVORA. 209 
furnishing another instance of the peculiar affinity of their fauna to that of Southern 
Central America. In fact, as Mr. Salvin informs me, this fauna seems to be, in the 
first place, very closely allied to that of Mazatlan and the neighbouring parts of 
Western Mexico; and then, missing the whole of Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and 
Nicaragua, its next nearest affinities are with Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and other 
parts of North-Western South America*. (See also below, p. 211, under Lepus 
graysoni.) 
BASSARICYON (p. 70). 
When treating above of Bassaricyon gabbi, I was in great hopes that the lost skin of 
Mr. Allen’s unique type specimen might be recovered in time to be described and 
figured in this Appendix. Although disappointed in this respect, I have to record that 
my friend Mr. Oldfield Thomas has detected a second example of the genus in the fine 
collection of mammals formed by Mr. Clarence Buckley in Ecuador. The skull of this 
example agrees in all essentials with that of B. gabbi, but differs in minor details, which 
seem to indicate specific distinction; and Mr. Thomas has therefore named it B. alleni, 
in honour of the founder of the genus f. 
The most remarkable fact about this Ecuador Bassaricyon is its strange external 
resemblance, both in form and colour, to Cercoleptes caudivolvulus; in fact, in 
Mr. Thomas’s words, it is only to be distinguished by “the flatness of the head and 
the greyness of the face, as compared with the high head and yellowish face of the 
Kinkajou.” This resemblance is the more extraordinary as the skulls of both B. gabbi 
and B. allent indicate a much closer relationship to Nasuwa and Procyon than to the 
other genera of the family. 
As soon as I was acquainted with this interesting discovery I wrote to Mr. Allen 
suggesting that the lost skin of his type might have been mislaid among the specimens 
of Cercoleptes in the National Museum at Washington. In a recent letter, however, 
he informs me that the most careful search has been made in vain; we must 
therefore wait for more specimens to show whether B. gabdi agrees with B. alleni in 
its extraordinary superficial likeness to Cercoleptes caudivolvulus. 
[PHOCIDA—OTARIIDA (p. 89).] 
Under this head I quoted Dampier’s account of the Seals which were taken in his 
time off the coast of Yucatan, remarking that I had been unable to find any modern 
evidence of the existence of Seals on the east coast of Central America, and observing 
that the species most likely to occur there would be the West-Indian forms named Phoca 
* The range of Rhodinocichla rosea, Less., as given by Messrs. Salvin and Godman (Aves, p. 39), affords 
another excellent example of the facts here mentioned. 
t+ See P. Z. 8. 1880, p. 397, pl. xxxviii. (descr. orig.). 
BIOL. CENT.-AMER., Mamm. Vol. 1, October 1881. 2E 
