THE YELLOW-NECKED FIELD MOUSE 545 
THE YELLOW-NECKED FIELD MOUSE. 
APODEMUS FLAVICOLLIS (Melchior). 
1834. MUS FLAVICOLLIS, Melchior, Den Danske Staats og Norges Pattedyr, 99 ; 
described from Sjzlland, Denmark ; de Winton, Zoologzst, December 1894, 441 ; 
Lydekker ; (Afodemus) Miller (Catalogue). 
1874. Mus SYLVATICUS, Lilljeborg, Sveriges og Norges Ryggradsdjur, i., 263; 
Barrett-Hamilton, Proc. Zool. Soc., London, 1900, 404, 406, 408 (in part ; sub-species 
M. s. typicus, cellarius, princeps, wintonz) ; Fatio, Trouessart, Winge, and Collett 
(all in part). 
For full Synonymy of species and typical sub-species, see Miller’s 
Catalogue. 
History :—In 1834 Melchior described his Mus flavicollis from 
material collected in Sjelland, Denmark; in 1836 the editor of 
Wiegmann’s Archiv fiir Naturgeschichte (1836, 78), when reviewing 
Melchior’s book, expressed his decided opinion that A. flavicollis was 
nothing but a large variety of sy/vaticus, and for upwards of sixty years 
subsequent writers appear to have been satisfied with this opinion, 
In 1894 de Winton studied some giant Field Mice from Herefordshire 
and came to the conclusion that they, together with a specimen from 
Oundle, Northamptonshire, and another from Tharand, Saxony, were 
distinct from A. sy/vatécus, and that they were referable to Melchior’s 
species. Barrett-Hamilton, finding that Field Mice from Hilleréd, in 
Sjeelland, Denmark (a locality almost topotypical for flavicoll7s), agreed 
with typical sy/vaticus from Upsala, regarded, in 1900, Melchior’s name 
as a synonym of sylvaticus typicus ; he was not then aware that two forms 
of Field Mouse were living in Sjelland ; at the same time he distin- 
guished, as sub-species of sy/vaticus, Mus cellarius, J. V. Fisher (Zool. 
Gart., Vii., 153, 1866), described from cellars at or near St Petersburg, 
Russia, and his own JV. s. prénceps, described from Bustenari, Rumania; 
de Winton’s mice were described as a sub-species, weztonz, of sylvaticus 
also. With much more material at his disposal Miller has concluded 
that the giant Field Mouse is specifically distinct from A. sylvaticus, 
and that this large species is the Mus flavicollis of Melchior. Miller 
further regards the British A. ( wzxtonz as a distinct sub-species from 
the typical A. f flavicollis of the Continent. His views are adopted in 
the present work. 
Two recent authors of great eminence, Winge and Collett, do not 
think A. flavicoll’s to be a valid species. The former (Danmarks 
Pattedyr, 94) regards flavicollis as simply a well-grown sylvaticus ,;} 
1 “There does not appear to be any occasion to speak even of a true racial dis- 
tinction ; the difference is most likely dependent upon accidental better or worse 
condition.” 
