226 PITHECIIIU MELANURUS. 



survey all our invaluable treasures , it will be somewhat 

 comprehensible, how the things stand in our Museum 

 some 30, 40 years ago, when the scientific workers were 

 still less in number than at present, and just at that time 

 the collections were increasing day by day ! 



Under such bad circumstances a great deal of work 

 remained undone and many valuable specimen was getting 

 away or lost for ever ! Several years successively Prof. 

 Schlegel had all the Vertebrates under his charge ! It there- 

 fore was no wonder that I found in 1875 several hundred 

 skulls, belonging to stujBFed mammals; these skulls were 

 uncleaned and not always carefully labeled. In the course 

 of years I happened to bring order in that mass, although 

 as a matter of course not always without mistakes, and 

 so merely a couple of dozens still remained undetermined. 

 Among the latter my friend Oldfield Thomas from the 

 British Museum met with two skulls labeled »Java and 

 Sumatra, 1834" and bearing the same marks as the 

 stuffed specimens of P. melanurus in the collection , and 

 with a very high grade of probability I labeled these 

 skulls as belonging to our specimens of the named species, 

 and exhibited them under that name in my Catalogue 

 osteologique , 1887, p. 215, although with a note of in- 

 terrogation. 



Having not detected in our Museum other Mice-specimens 

 to which these skulls may belong, I now am convinced 

 that we have here the two wanting skulls of the stuffed 

 specimens of P. melanurus. The skull of the Java-specimen 

 has been reproduced on plate 9, figs 1, 2, 3 and 4. 



The following measurements are those of the Java *) 

 specimen , in millimeters : 



1) In V. d. Hoeven's paper is a mistake corrected, not correctly however, 

 in the english translation. V. d. Hoeven writes in dutch, 1. c. p. 52: »het 

 voorwerp van Sumatra is 0,360 lang, waarvan de kop ongeveer 0.048 inneemt, 

 de staart 0.175. Het grootere voorwerp van Suma/ra is lichter ros gekleurd." 

 This has heen translated in A. M. N. H. 1859, p. 471 thus: /,The specimen 

 from Java is . . . The larger specimen from Sumatra is of a lighter red colour." 



Notes from the Leyden IMuseutn, Vol. XII. 



