Descriptions of Nine New Mammals. 169 



large and handsome wood rat " i« abundant everywhere on the 

 loAver parts of the wooded hill slopes and adjacent dry ground 

 covered with niesquite and other seed-bearing trees. It is strictly 

 nocturnal, and usuallv lives in holes or burrows at the foot of a 

 tree or under some convenient shelter, from which its pathway 

 or trail, neatly cleared of brusli, leaves, and tuigs, leads away. 

 It lives also in ledges of loose ruck, and in a few such i)laces 

 small collections of sticks, shells of land crabs, and other Xeotoina, 

 bric-a-brac were found. These were rare, however. Where the 

 animals are common these trails intersect one another and form 

 a network on the brush and tree-covered slopes. Sometimes 

 their runways reach down on the low wooded flats close to the 

 coast, but they are not common in such places." 



Neotoma tenuicauda !.;p. nov. 



Type Xo. l'i'^2v d" fid. C. i^. Xational Museum (De])artment of Agri- 

 culture coUectiou). From north slope of the Sierra Xevada de Colima, 

 .Jalisco, :\Iexico (altitude 3,6-30 meters, or 12,000 feet), April 13, 1S92. 

 Collected l)y E. AV. Xelson. (Orijiinal number, 2-44().) 



Measurements (in millimeters, taken in flesh l)y collector). — 

 Total length, 340 ; tail vertebrae, 160 ; hind foot, 31. 



General Characters. — Size smallest of the known s[)ecies, being 

 slightly smaller even than X. niexicana; tail -deader and sparsely 

 haired, Ijicolor; ears rather small, sparsely haired; fore feet 

 soile<l white; hind feet whitish, clouded with dusky. 



Color. — Upper parts dark brown, more or less suffused with 

 yellowish fulvous, particularly on the neck and shoulders, })ass- 

 ing into dark fulvous on the flanks and hips : under parts soiled 

 white (the plumbeous Ijasal color showing through), with a 

 salmon patch on the inner side of each axilla; tail Incolor, 

 dusky above and whitish below ; fore feet and ankles soiled 

 white: hind feet whitish, strongly clouded with dusky prox- 

 imally (the dusky fading out in passing over the metatarsals) ; 

 toes pure Avhite. 



Crani'il (iiid Dental Character--<. — Nasals rather short, not reach- 

 ing plane of lachrymals, ascending rami of i)remaxilla? ending 

 on plane of lachrymals ; audital l)ull;e rather large for a Xeotoma; 

 molar series narrow, with sharply angulai' ])risms; first upper 

 molar with an internal lateral closed triano;le ; lower molars with 



