i ——— 
MIMOMYS 473 
Pitymys are combined with a peculiar skull (resembling, how- 
ever, that of some species of Mzcrotus, rather than any of 
Pitymys) and the essential external characters of Mzcrotus. 
Pitymys is of rather southern distribution, ranging in the 
Old World from Belgium, France, eastwards to Rumania, and 
south to the coast of the Mediterranean, including Greece, 
Sicily, and Trebizond, Asia Minor, while one species at least 
inhabits central Asia (Turkestan). In the New World it is 
found in the eastern and south-eastern United States, with 
Mexico. 
It is numerous in species, no less than twenty-five distinct 
forms being recognised by Miller as European. Of these, 
P. subterraneus, De Selys, is present in Belgium and northern 
France, just across the English Channel. In Britain it makes 
its earliest known appearance, the remains of three or 
four species having been found in the Cromerian Upper Fresh- 
water Bed, a late Pliocene deposit. It may then have died out, 
for, with the exception of a single 7” doubtfully ascribed to it 
by Hinton from the early Pleistocene (“‘ High Terrace”) of the 
Thames Valley, no trace of the genus is known from the 
succeeding epochs. 
Hinton regards the original home of Pz¢ymys as in central 
or southern Asia, whence he believes that it spread westwards 
via Asia Minor to western Europe, and eastwards to North 
America by north-eastern Asia. The discovery of slightly 
more primitive species (P. majorzt and P. carrutherst) in Asia, 
and of the aberrant JZ. zrene and its allies, lends support 
to this view. 
[Genus MIMOMYS1! 
This genus was instituted by Forsyth Major (Proc. Zool. 
Soc., London, 1902, i., 103-107) for his WZ. plocenicus of the 
upper Pliocene of Italy, and the Norwich Crag of Britain; for 
his JZ. newtont and for Avvicola intermedius of Newton 
(Mem. Geol. Survey, 1882, 83), both the last from the late 
' Extinct. Wrongly assigned to Phenacomys by Nehring (Maturw. Wochenschrift, 
No. 231, 15th July 1894, 346), and subsequently included by him in his Dolomys 
(Zool. Anzeiger, toth Jan, 1898, 15), from which latter it was distinguished by Forsyth 
Major (supra). 
VOL. I. 2H 
