MAMMALS OF WEST INDIES 
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 coqst, 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- 
