THE GIANT SQUIRRELS OF INDIA. BURMA & CEYLON. 881 



. snffipient number of lot-alitios it will be found tluit there is a paler and 

 a darker form of wliut is now typical indica, each limited to its own 

 district. And that the Mysore form, intermediate between hengalensis 

 and maxima, will be found to be constant for its own area and there- 

 fore worthy of a name, equally with the other races. This is one of 

 the questions 1 would ask members to help us to solve. 



Blanford recognises as inhabitino- Ceylon a grizzled species S. 

 macrums (it should be macrourus) and a black variety S. tennantii (it 

 should be tennenti), but, by some error, he has transposed the names. 

 True S. macrourns is the black form and the grizzled one is tennenli. 

 It is true that Kelaart states the brown and grizzled forms to be 

 seasonal ones, but I have grave doubts of this ; the analogy of 

 changes elsewhere would point to the brown as a seasonal form ot the 

 black, if of any, but we have several instances in the genus of just 

 this difference separating definable local races. Here again members 

 can help with dated and exactly localised specimens and notes. 



Jerdon and others state that the grizzled form ( R. macrourus tennenti) 

 is also found on the mainland as- far north as Travancore and the 

 Nilgiris. There is a specimen labelled as from the Shevroy Hills 

 in the National Collection, but specimens, exactly localised and dated 

 are badly wanted, not only to prove the existence of this species on 

 the Mainland, but also, that being proved, to show whether it and 

 maxima occur together or have separate defined habitats. 



The Giant Squirrel of the trans-Gangetic region is recorded by 

 Blanford as bicolor, but this is most certainlv a misnomer; that name 

 was given to the very distinct form found in Java. The name I have 

 adopted in this paper, viz., yigantea was actually based on specimens 

 from Assam. Unfortunately, the National Collection has no speci- 

 mens from Assam, though it has quite a nice series from Sikhim and 

 Nepaul of the dark-brown western race macrvro'des. 



I had hoped at first to deal, in this paper, with the whole genus, but 

 so many forms, which I have never seen, have been named by 

 American naturulists. from Sumatra and the Malay Archipelago, that 

 I had to give up the idea. 1 have, however, included in these notes 

 the forms of the ]\Ialay Peninsula. 



Blanford lumps together the large black Assam g/gantea and the 

 smaller Malay nielanopepla, two forms which are markedly and con- 

 stantly distinct in severalother characters besides size. The latter, the 



