6 SOLENODON PARADOXUS. 



■paradoxus wore discovered until 1907, when A. Hyatt Verrill secured an adult 

 male, an adult female, and a young individual still retaining its milk dentition. 

 Of these specimens. Dr. J. A. Allen (:08) has given a brief account. The skulls 

 and dentition are well figured by him and critical comparison is made with 

 skulls of S. cubanus. The preservation of the skin antl soft parts of the speci- 

 mens was too poor to admit of fiu'ther detailed study, however. A l)rief pa])er 

 by Verrill (:07) recounts the few facts he was able to glean as to tlie habils of 

 these animals in San Domingo. The ])resent account will, it is hoped, serve 

 partially to fill the hiatus existing in our knowledge of the general anatomy of 

 the species. 



Specimens of the Cuban Solenodon, were made known l)y Poey in 1834, 

 through a communication to a Havana paper, "El plantel." Later, in 1851, 

 he gave a more detailed notice of the animal, with a colored plate, in his "Mem- 

 orias sobre la historia natural de la isla de Cuba." Poey obtained specimens 

 from the mountainous regions east of Bayamo, Cuba, where the animal was 

 said to be well known. This author reviews at some length the early accounts 

 of the native Cuban animals, and after an exhaustive search, fails to find any 

 evidence that it was known to the early historians of the country. Since he 

 was unable to attach to it any of the native names of animals mentioned by 

 these writers, he proposed to call it the Almiqui, a name derived from that of 

 one of the mountains in the eastern department of Cuba near where his speci- 

 mens were taken. He supposed the Cuban animal to be conspecific with that 

 of Haiti and San Domingo. Gundlach subsequently obtained examples from 

 the Sierra Maestra, but Ramon de la Sagra's statement that it occurs in the 

 region of Trinidad, Cuba, Poey takes pains to show, is based solely on the 

 latter's note in "El plantel" concerning vague rejwrts of an animal in that 

 region whose identity could not be certainly establislietl. 



According to A. H. Verrill (:07, p. 56), the natives of San Domingo have 

 various names for Solenodon paradoxus, as Orso (bear), Hormigero (ant-eater), 

 Juron (ferret) "also applied to the mongoose," and Milqui. In his list of the 

 mammals of Middle America and the West Indies Elliot gives it a vernacular 

 name " Agouta," whose origin I have been unable to discover. 



