206 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



Caribbean Indians used the sharp incisor teeth of the agouti in their 

 ceremonies, for cutting the skin all over their bodies to draw the blood. 



CASTOROIDIDAE. 



Amblyrhiza inundata Cope. 



Amblyrhiza inundata Cope, Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, 1868, p. 313. 



Loxomylus latidens et quadrans Cope, Ibid., 1870, p. 608; 1871, p. 

 102. 



In 1868 there was deposited at Philadelphia a cargo of cave earth, 

 limestone fragments, and bone breccia, brought for commercial 

 purposes from the island of Anguilla. A number of bone fragments 

 were discovered by Cope in this shipment, and among them the re- 

 mains of a large extinct rodent, which he named Amblyrhiza inundata. 

 At the instance of Professor Cope, the colonial physician at St. Mar- 

 tin's made further investigation of the Anguilla caves and sent back 

 a quantity of fragments, including the femur of an Iguana, portions 

 of the leg bone of a rodent the size of an agouti, and perhaps related 

 to it, a fragment of an artiodactyle, "apparently a member of the 

 Bovidae," as well as more portions of Amblyrhiza, including teeth, 

 on which Cope promptly founded two species of a new genus — 

 Loxomylus quadrans and L. latidens — but these are now considered 

 synonymous with Amblyrhiza inundata. 



Very recently, J. W. Spencer (1910) has announced the discovery 

 of Amblyrhiza remains in a cavern on the island of St. Martin's, and 

 notes the further discovery in Cuba by Professor de la Torre, of 

 "a large Pleistocene fauna of rodents, edentates and other verte- 

 brates, as also excellent specimens of Jurassic fossils." 



Note. — Coendu pallidas Waterhouse. — The prehensile-tailed por- 

 cupine is attributed to the "West Indies" by Waterhouse (Mammalia, 

 1848, 2, p. 435), on the basis of a skin so labeled in the British Museum. 

 Probably this specimen came from Trinidad. 



