ALLEN: MAMMALS OF THE WEST INDIES. 193 



depth, amounting to " not less than eight hundred and seventy-three 

 fathoms." This cleft may well have developed to form the supposed 

 barrier between Cuba and San Domingo. Between the Greater and 

 the Lesser Antilles the deep valley between the Virgin Islands and 

 Anguilla is considered the barrier that prevented the interchange 

 of many of the South American types of the Lesser Antilles and the 

 Central American derivatives of the Greater Antilles. 



Annoted List. 

 DIDELPHIIDAE. 



DlDELPHIS MARSUPIALIS INSULARIS J. A. Allen. 



Di del phis marsupialis insularis J. A. Allen, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. 

 Hist., 1902, 16, p. 259. 



As stated by Dr. J. A. Allen in describing this opossum from Trini- 

 dad, "St. Vincent, Grenada, and Dominica specimens are similar, 

 and were most likely derived from the Trinidad stock, having doubtless 

 been introduced into these islands from Trinidad." The Museum 

 collection contains six specimens from Trinidad and eight from 

 Grenada, and a careful comparison of these corroborates Dr. Allen's 

 view that they are identical. A single youngish example from St. 

 Vincent, collected in 1903 by Mr. A. H. Clark, has the dorsal part 

 of the supraoccipital bone considerably wider and slightly different 

 in shape from that of the Grenada and Trinidad specimens, a condi- 

 tion perhaps due to youth. The skin of this specimen shows the 

 melanistic phase, and has the long hairs of the body almost entirely 

 black. The ears, however, are very slightly tipped with white, instead 

 of being entirely black. 



De Rochefort, writing in 1658, speaks of "opossums" as one of 

 the five species of mammals known by him to be native to Tobago. 

 Similarly Du Tertre, in the 1667 edition of his "Histoire Generale des 

 Antilles habitees par les Francais," Vol. 2, mentions having first met 

 with the "Manitou" on Grenada. At that time the animal seems to 

 have been unknown in the islands to the northward; for, in the 

 previous edition of this work, written in 1654, Du Tertre makes no 

 mention of it in the portion dealing with the native mammals of 

 the French islands (chiefly St. Christopher, Guadeloupe, and Marti- 



