44 MR. E. T. BENNETT ON THE CHINCHILLIDZA. 
parent, and was noticed in the course of the same year by Cuvier in the second edition 
of his ‘ Régne Animal’! ; in the English translation of which work by Mr. Griffith, it 
had also been previously figured and described from the same specimen, while living, 
under the trivial name of the Marmot Diana. At the dispersion of Mr. Brookes’s Mu- 
seum, both the skin and skeleton were sold, and passed, I believe, into the hands of 
M. Temminck, who purchased them for the Leyden Museum. 
In the ‘ Annales des Sciences Naturelles’ for November 1830%, appeared a paper 
by MM. D’Orbigny fils, and Isidore Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, ‘On the Viscacha and 
the Chinchilla, regarded as the types of a genus named Callomys, together with the 
description of a new species’. The authors of this notice seem not to have been aware 
that they had been anticipated with respect to both the animals named, for they make 
no reference to the various papers respecting them published in this country during the 
two preceding years. The generic union which they proposed between the Viscacha 
and the Chinchilla, was founded on an imperfect knowledge of the latter, of which they 
knew neither the teeth nor the toes?. Of the former they possessed excellent materials, 
and have given a good description ; together with additional particulars of considerable 
interest relative to its geographical distribution, habits, and mode of life. The sup- 
posed new species was known to them only by the skin, deprived of its feet, its ears, 
and its tail: of it I shall have occasion again to speak. 
In August, 1831, M. Lesson gave, in the ‘ Bulletin des Sciences Naturelles’’, an 
extract from his ‘Illustrations de Zoologie’, containing a new description of the 
Viscacha, under its original name of Lagostomus trichodactylus, which M. Kuhn had 
previously (in a Notice of the paper in the ‘ Annales des Sciences Naturelles’, con- 
tained in the January Number of the ‘ Bulletin’,) restored to the animal. The 
‘Tilustrations’ themselves have since appeared, and contain, in addition to the de- 
scription, a figure of the animal, and representations of its feet and of its muzzle. 
M. Goldfuss has subsequently published, in his ‘ Naturhistorische Atlas’, a figure of 
the Viscacha, and representations of its teeth, copied from those given in the ‘ Linnean 
Transactions’ by Mr. Brookes. 
For the history of the Chinchilla down to August 1829, I must refer to my ac- 
count of that animal, published in the first Number of the ‘ Gardens and Menagerie of 
the Zoological Society’; to which I can add nothing of earlier date, except the slight 
mention in the extract from Jolis already given, and a reference to a figure of the 
1 Tom. i. p. 222. 2 Tom. xxi. p. 282. 
3 During the passage of this paper through the press I have received, by the kindness of his venerable and 
distinguished father, the ‘ Notice sur les Travaux de M. Isidore Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire’, printed on the occasion 
of his successful competition for one of the zoological chairs in the Academie des Sciences. From this I have 
the pleasure to learn that M. Isidore Geoffroy has since seen reason to abandon his opinion of the generic 
identity of the two animals. 
+ Tom, xxvi. p. 186. 5 Th, iii. p. 262. t. 289. 
