40 ZOOLOGICAL RESEARCHES 



Du Queah River agree an alcoliolic specimen from the 

 Farmington River and a stuffed specimen from the Gold- 

 Coast. Another alcoholic specimen from the Farmington 

 River and curiously enough a stuffed specimen from the 

 Gold-Coast have a burned appearance : the whiskers are 

 down to the base burned off and nearly all the hairs of 

 body and tail have lost their tips , each hair ending like 

 the whiskers in a brownish colored small ball , so that the 

 general color is slaty black (the color of the basal parts 

 of the hairs in the other specimens) and the hairs are very 

 rough to the touch instead of being velvet soft as in the 

 other species : moreover the feet and ears are thrivelled and 

 of a sooty color. Now it is possible that the negros have 

 procured the named specimens after having burned the 

 trees: it may also be that the animals lived in the collec- 

 tor's house and rolled in the fire, perhaps on the man- 

 ner related by Lataste (Les Gerboises d'Algerie, Mus. civ. 

 di Stor. nat. di Gen. 1883 , p. 679) of some species of 

 Dipus. 



Incisors light yellow, ungrooved. The upper premolar 

 smaller than the hindmost upper molar; first upper molar 

 of about the size of the second. Lower premolar nearly of 

 the size of the hindmost lower molar; first and second 

 lower molars equally sized , larger than their congeners. 

 All the molars concave , hardly a trace of enamel-folds. 



The material at my disposal is not sufficient to decide 

 whether there are really good grounds to separate ge- 

 nerically from Myoxus the species generally brought under 

 the group Graphiurus. Peters (Reise nach Mossambique , 

 Saugethiere, 1852, p. 137) observed: »Obgleich es sehr 

 wünschenswerth ware , die africanischen Schlafer in eine 

 besondere Gruppe Graphiurus vereinigen zu können, so 

 scheint eine generische Abtrennung derselben doch nicht 

 ganz gerechtfertigt zu sein". Alston (P. Z. S. L. 1876 , p. 

 80) accepted Graphiurus F. Cuvier & Geoffroy , as a dis- 

 tinct genus, characterized by a » short tail, cylindrical, 

 ending in a pencil". Graphiurus capensis F. Cuvier & 



Notes from the Leyden ]VIiaseiiiii , "Vol. X. 



