On new Oarnivora from North-east Africa. 461 



grizzled, and light patches on neck and throat absent or 

 faintly indicated, the whitish area on chin sharply contrasted 

 with region immediately behind it. Summer pelage not 

 known. 



Measurements. — Type. Head and body 1220 mm.; hind 

 foot 305 ; hind foot including hoof 355 ; ear 120 ; upper 

 length of skull 161; condylo-basal length 189 + ; zygomatic 

 breadth 92; mandible 164; maxillary tooth-row 55*8; 

 mandibular looth-row 66. 



Specimens examined. — Eight (three in U.S. National 

 Museum), all from the Province of Burgos, Spain. 



LI. — On Two new Car nivora from North-east Africa. 

 By A. Cabrera, C.M.Z.S. 



Until so recently as 1909, Otocyon megalotis, described by 

 Desmarest in 1822 from specimens obtained by Delalande 

 in the Cape Colony, was the only form o£ its genus 

 known to naturalists. All subsequent names (lalandit, cafer, 

 auritus), as based also on the South- African animal, are mere 

 synonyms. Now, last year, my friend Mr. G. S. Miller 

 described as Otocyon virgatus the long-eared fox from 

 British East Africa (type locality, Naivasha), distinguishing- 

 it by the peculiar colour of the tail and the ventral surface of 

 the body, and by the skull i( differing from that of 0. mega- 

 lotis in the flatter, less inflated audital bullae, and absence of 

 notch between angular and subangular processes of man- 

 dible" *. The last detail is not correct, Mr. Miller having 

 been misled by Huxley's bad figure in ' Proceedings of the 

 Zoological Society,' 1880, p. 258, in which the lower jaw 

 presents above the subangular process a deep notch, a purely 

 imaginary characteristic that is never normally present in 

 skulls of Otocyon. This may be seen in the woodcut pub- 

 lished by Mivart in his { Monograph of the Canidae,' p. 205, 

 that figure being the most correct and most trustworthy I 

 have seen. 



Otocyon virgatus is, notwithstanding, readily distinguish- 

 able from megahtis not only by its colour but also by the 

 less inflated bullae and the smaller teeth, the width of m 1 

 hardly representing a fifth of the total width of the palate at 



* Smithsonian Misc. Coll. vol. lii. part 4, no. 1883. 



