283 



Haiti. Of the past history of these hutias we only know 

 that one extinct species (Capromys columbianus) has been 

 discovered in the Pleistocene deposits of Cuba. The only near 

 relation living is Procapromys geayi, from the neighbourhood 

 of Caracas in the mountains of Venezuela. This implies 

 southern affinities of the genera Capromys and Plagiodontia. 

 Proceeding further south in search of their possible ances- 

 tors we meet with another nearly related genus (Matyoscor) 

 in the Pleistocene of Bolivia. Still further south we find 

 on some of the islands of the Chilean coast, as well as in Chile, 

 Peru and Argentina, the coypu (Myocastor coypus), already 

 alluded to as resembling the hutias. Finally, in the Pliocene, 

 Miocene and Eocene beds of Patagonia, various ancestral 

 types of these modern forms have been discovered by Pro- 

 fessor Ameghino. Thus the available evidence points to a 

 remote Patagonian origin of the hutias. The question then 

 arises, have the ancestors of these West Indian mammals 

 proceeded northward through eastern or western South 

 America ? The testimony we possess is distinctly in favour 

 of the latter theory, though it is mainly of a negative cha- 

 racter. In the west we have the living coypu and the extinct 

 Matyoscor, while the former has only invaded Brazil in recent 

 geological times. The Venezuelan Procapromys might lead 

 us to believe that the ancestors of the hutias had gained 

 admittance to the Antillean region by an old land connection 

 across the lesser Antilles. But since no trace of the former 

 presence there of any coypu-like mammal has been dis- 

 covered, and as a species of hutia exists on Swan island, the 

 hypothesis that the ancestors of these mammals reached the 

 West Indies directly from some western lands seems to me the 

 most probable. 



Except the Bahama raccoon (p. 181) and a species of 

 opossum (Didelphys marsupialis), which inhabits the islands 

 of Trinidad, Dominica, Grenada and St. Vincent, all other 

 Antillean mammals are small and inconspicuous. The 

 raccoon may possibly be very ancient, but we know too little 

 about its geological history to enable us to speculate on 

 its origin in the Bahama islands. The presence of the 

 opossum on some of the Lesser Antilles seems to indicate 

 that they had been connected with one another and with Vene- 



