1897. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 151 



Merriam himself should have proposed " Austral " to supersede 

 " Sonoran." To a resident in New York or Washington, " Austral " 

 may be an appropriate term enough to indicate the region in question ; 

 but we owe so much to the American students of geographical 

 distribution that we regret the more they do not seem to remember 

 that their terminology should be appropriate for world-wide use. 



A RE^ilARKABLE RoDENT. 



In 1894, M"^- E. W. Nelson obtained from Mount Popocatepetl 

 in Mexico, at and above a height of 3,000 metres, specimens of a small, 

 short-eared, tailless rodent, which lives in the large saccaton grass 

 there in considerable numbers, having habits and coloration like those 

 of the common meadow mice of the mountains, with whose runways 

 its own are intermingled. This rodent has lately been described by 

 Dr. C. Hart Merriam under the name oi Romerolagus nelsoni [Proc. Biol. 

 Soc. Washington, x., pp. 169-174, Dec. 29, 1896), and has been referred 

 by him to the Leporids. Its progression, however, is on all fours, in 

 which respect, as well as in some important morphological features, it 

 departs from the true leporine type. Although some Oriental species, 

 of which Dr. Merriam is possibly not aware, show similar lack of 

 agreement with the hitherto received diagnosis of the Leporidae, yet, 

 were it not for the high authority of Dr. Merriam, we should incline 

 to place this Popocatepetl rodent with the Lagomyidae. The follow- 

 ing characters are admittedly those of that family : complete clavicles, 

 short hind legs, absence of an external tail, and short ears. The skull, 

 it is true, is said to be " much as in Lepus (subgenus Sylvilagus)." 

 Nevertheless it departs from the leporine type in the depression of the 

 brain-case, the posterior elongation of the jugals, the small size and 

 absence anteriorly of the supraorbital processes — all, as before, 

 characters in which it approaches the skull of Lagomyidae. But, 

 in the regrettable absence of information as to the dentition, specialists 

 must for the present content themselves with recognising the form as 

 one of unusual interest. 



To the name given we have three distinct objections. First, we 

 seem to recollect that the catalogue of the Mexican exhibit at the 

 Chicago Exhibition contained the reproduction of a photograph of 

 this same rodent, with the name " Lepus diazi, sp. nov," assigned to 

 it by Ferrari-Perez. This has unfortunately been overlooked by Dr. 

 Merriam. Next, we cannot approve of this combination of a modern 

 personal name with a Greek noun : words like Romerolagus, Leedsichthys, 

 Agassizocviniis, Lichtensteinipiciis, Uroskinnera, and Cookilaria are the 

 scorn of the cultured and the laughing-stock of the vulgar. Lastly, if 

 this "new and remarkable "animal really has "an interest quite 

 apart from that which attaches to most new discoveries," is it not a 

 pity that the names proposed for it should be of an interest so limited 

 and purely personal ? 



