184 Bangs — Sciurus variabilis from Santa Marta, Colombia. 



Sciurus variabilis variabilis Is. Geoffroy. 



Sciurus variabilis Is. Geoffroy, Mag. de Zool. I, plate iv, 1832. 



Type locality. — Colombia (restricted here to the lowland forest about 

 Santa Marta; altitude, 500-600 feet). 



General diameters. — Size rather large; ear high; colors vivid; skull 

 large; audital bullae large, much inflated, pappery; no small upper pre- 

 molar. 



Color.— (No. 8018, $ adult, from Santa Marta, (500 ft, altitude, appar- 

 ently representing tbe normal phase of coloration). Upper parts — head, 

 back, rump, about 90 mm. of basal portion of tail (above and below), and 

 upper surface of legs orange-rufous, variegated with black — each hair 

 orange-rufous, with a black median band ; lower sides, shoulders, arms, 

 a large patch above each shoulder nearly meeting on back, feet, hands, 

 and rather more than the apical three-fourths of tail (all around) vivid, 

 intense orange-rufous— the hairs without black bands ; sides of head and 

 chin brownish ochraeeous ; hairs of back and sides plumbeous at base ; 

 line of demarkation between colors of upper and under parts low down ; 

 under parts pure white to base of hairs, this color extending halfway 

 along under side of neck and in a narrow line a little way down under 

 surface of leg and arm. 



Variations in color. — The variations in color run in two opposite direc- 

 tions from the normal, caused (1) by the widening of the black median 

 bands of the hairs of the upper parts, and (2) by the narrowing or total 

 disappearance of the black bands— one 'melanism,' the other 'ery- 

 thrism.' ? * 



The darkest individual in the series (No. 8015) has all the black bands 

 of the hairs of back and sides, those of legs and arms also being banded, 

 much broadened, the general tone being dnsky, somewhat relieved by 

 a few rufous-tipped hairs; the tail is as usual above, but darker below. 

 No. 801-4 has no black bands at all on the hairs of the upper parts, being 

 a uniform fiery orange-rufous above. 



Five other specimens approach either one or the other of these ex- 

 tremes to a greater or less degree, leaving fourteen out of twenty-one 

 examples perfectly normal, with but a minimum of color variation. 

 The under parts of all are clear white. 



Cranial characters. — Skull normal, without small upper premolar; au- 

 dital bullae large, much inflated, thin and papery. 



Size of an average old adult $ skull, No. 8028. — Basal length, 49.6; 

 occipito-nasal length, 57.4; zygomatic width, 34 ; mastoid width, 26; in- 

 terorbital width, 19.8 ; length of nasals, 19 ; length of upper tooth row, 

 9.6 ; length of mandible, 33. 



(For measurements see table, p. 186.) 



*See O. Thomas on color variation in Sciurus finlaysoni, Proc. Zool. Soc. 

 London, 1898, p. 245. 



