178 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



raccoons, but such a possibility seems extremely remote. Feilden 

 and others assume with some confidence that the raccoon on Barbados 

 might readily have drifted thither from South America with some 

 of the wreckage of trees and flotsam that is constantly borne to the 

 windward shores of that island by the easterly currents of air and sea. 

 On the other hand, it might readily have been introduced during the 

 past four hundred years by the European invaders. Patrick Browne 

 mentions the raccoon as among the mammals occasionally brought 

 in captivity to Jamaica, but here it is not known to have escaped and 

 established itself. 



The presence of the insectivorous genus Solenodon on both Cuba 

 and San Domingo emphasizes the geographic relationship of the two 

 islands. Evidently these primitive animals have been here for a very 

 long period; so that not only have their congeners died out on the 

 neighboring mainland, but they have themselves, through long 

 isolation, become markedly differentiated on the two islands. The 

 fact that their nearest living relative is Centetes of Madagascar need 

 indicate nothing more than that both genera are surviving. primitive 

 types of this widespread order that have been preserved in their 

 island habitats, free from the keener competition with the more nu- 

 merous mainland fauna. The fact that all the known fossil Insectivora 

 of America are found north of Mexico, and that the order is appar- 

 ently represented in South America by a very recent influx of North 

 American types into the northern part of that continent is quite in 

 line with the fact that Solenodon is found in the Greater Antilles only, 

 and is quite absent from the Lesser Antilles, which, we may suppose, 

 it would have had to reach from the South American mainland. 



The terrestrial mammals of the island of Tobago are so evidently 

 derivatives of those in Trinidad that they are not here specially con- 

 sidered. Several genera occur on Tobago that are not known from 

 the other islands to the north, but are now present on Trinidad. 

 These are a peccary (Tayassu), a paca (Agouti), a Zygodontomys, and 

 a squirrel closely akin to Scuirus chapmani of the latter island. In 

 addition there are two opossums (Didelphys, Marmosa), an armadillo 

 (Dasypus), an agouti (Dasyprocta), and, if we may trust the old 

 French writers of two hundred and fifty years ago, a Megalomys was 

 formerly found there. 



Four fossil mammals have been hitherto currentlv recognized from 

 the Antilles. The ground sloth (Megalonyx) which seems to have 

 been common in Cuba during Pleistocene times, belongs to a genus 

 which has not been found on the mainland south of Texas and Florida. 



