882 

 AN INDIAN STOAT. 



BY 



R. C. Wroughton, f. z. s. 



Blanford records that a stoat taken by Dr. G. Henderson at Dras, 

 beyond the Koji La, is in the Indian Museum, Calcutta. This is, 

 I believe, the only authenticated case, a stoat having been taken in 

 India, and even this scarcely comes strictly under that category. 



Mr. 0. H. T. Whitehead has recently presented to the National 

 Collection a small collection of mammals, among which are three 

 specimens of a stoat (1 $ and 2 $ ), which, by their size, are evidently 

 of a different species from M. erminea of Europe. I have much 

 pleasure in naming this new species after Mr. Whitehead. 



MlJSTELA WHITEHEADI, Sp. 11. 



A mustela of the erminea type but of markedly smaller size. 



Fur and colour pattern as in M. erminea. 



Dimensions of the type taken in the flesh (the figures in brackets 

 are those of an adult female of the same species) :— 



Head and body, 21.0 (173): tail, 85 (63); hindfoot, 37 (28); 

 ear, 21 (16). 



Skull ; greatest length, 43 (37) ; basilar length, 38'7 (32-1) ; 

 zygomatic breadth, 23 (19*6) ; braincase breadth, 20*5 (17) ; length 

 B^ 4-9 (4) : length 2^ 3*6 (3-1). 



Hah.: Hazara Dist.. N. W. Frontier Province (Type from Kagan 

 Valley). 



Type : Adult male. No. 49. Collected by Mr. C. H. T. Whitehead 

 on 24th July 1908 and presented to the Natural History Museum, 

 South Kensington. 



In 1895, Mr. Thomas (Ann. Mag. N. H., p. 452) described a form 

 still smaller than whitehead}, from Ferghana, which he temporarily 

 classed as a sub-species of M. erminea, the typical European stoat. 

 This latter species has been broken up into quite a number of geogra- 

 phical races, the differences between these however are very small 

 compared with the gap which separates all of them from the present 

 form and, a fortiori, from ferghance. 



Accepting ferghan cs as a good species, and ignoring the local races 



