324 Dr. J. E. Gray's Synopsis of the African Squirrels 



1. Sciurus eborivorus, which is evidently only a bad bleached spe- 

 cimen of S. Stangeri ; and^ 2. Sciurus minutus, which is a distinct 

 species of tree-squirrel. All the specimens in his collection 

 were in a bad condition, very much bleached, and injured by 

 dirt; so that it is very difficult to compare them with the de- 

 scriptions, which were probably taken from the specimens before 

 they were so damaged by exposure and bad usage. M. du 

 Chaillu did not seem able to identify them with the names, or 

 at least he did not do so when requested ; so that it was of no 

 use for the Museum to purchase his specimens. Indeed it is 

 quite clear that M. du Chaillu is not responsible for the distinc- 

 tion of the species. 



I may cite, as an instance of his want of zoological knowledge 

 to qualify him for the writing of the paper that appears under 

 his name, that he sent to the British Museum, with the other 

 animals, at the commencement of his last travels, the skull of a 

 Bush-Antelope or Bush-Goat (which I described, as discovered 

 by him, under the name of Cephalophus longiceps, in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society ' as soon as it arrived) ; yet he 

 does not mention the animal in his narrative, and says, in the 

 resume of the zoology of the district, that antelopes are not 

 found there (!). In the same manner he sent specimens of two 

 kinds of Manis, viz. M. tetradactijla, with a long tail, and M. 

 africana with a short one. The occurrence of only one species 

 is mentioned in the narrative, showing that he did not know 

 that he had collected and sent home two very distinct species. 

 The short-tailed species was not discovered by either Dr. Baikie 

 or M. du Chaillu ; for it is evidently the short-tailed Manis that 

 Illiger named Manis gigantea, from Guinea, more than forty 

 years ago, which had been confused as a synonym with Manis 

 brachyura of India, and so overlooked. 



Temminck, in his 'Esquisses Zoologiques sur la cote de 

 Guinee' (Leyden, 1853), gives a list of the African Squirrels, and 

 several descriptions, in his usual general style, of the species 

 which he regards as new and therefore gives new names. All 

 the names in the list are marked with an asterisk, which, we 

 are told, in a former page, indicates the adult specimens in 

 the Leyden Museum, then under his direction ; but when 

 we turn to the notices of them in the following pages, he states 

 that he only knows several of the species from the descrip- 

 tions of the authors quoted. He places Sciurus congicus, Sc. 



he had discovered sundry new mammalia, and who wrote the paper that 

 appeared in the ' Journal of the Boston Natural History Society/ seems 

 to be ashamed of his work, and leaves the traveller whom he misled to 

 bear the discredit of his carelessness or ignorance. 



