162 Proceedings of the Boyal Physical Society. 



A little later, in the year 1899, a very distinct British race 

 was described by Mr Barrett-Hamilton (6) as a new species, 

 under the name of Mus muralis, namely, the representative 

 of the House Mouse found in the remote island of St Kilda. 

 This insular form is not only a very interesting one, but 

 is, moreover, especially important in connection with the 

 Fseroese mice now under consideration. 



Mus muralis resembles in shape and proportions Mus 

 muscuius, but is more robust and larger in size. The upper 

 surface is sepia brown with a grizzled appearance, due to 

 many of the hairs being tipped with rufous, and is not of 

 the typical smoky-brown tint characteristic of the ordinary 

 House Mouse. The colour of the under surface is very 

 remarkable, being buff, clearly separated by a well-marked 

 line of demarcation from the colour of the upper surface of 

 the body. The skull, when compared with that of Mus 

 musculus, is characterised by the greatly exaggerated narrow- 

 ness of the posterior opening of the nostrils. 



Coming now to the mice of the Faeroes, concerning which 

 little seems to be known, Debes (7), writing in 1673, 

 says there are both mice and rats, but that they are not 

 found in all the islands. Landt (8), who resided in the 

 islands from 1792 to 1798, tells us that the mouse {Mus 

 miiscidus) has existed there longer than the " Common Eat 

 {Mus rattus)'' but was decreasing in proportion to the 

 increase of the latter species, "so that the mice are now 

 scarcely seen." He also informs us that the islands Kolter, 

 Hestoe, Skuoe, Dimon, and Myggenes, where there were no 

 rats, are also free from mice — a fact which led to the 

 belief that the soil of the said islands had something in 

 it which these animals could not endure. Earth, therefore, 

 had at times been brought from these northern islands to 

 some of the houses at Thorshavn infested with rats and 

 mice; and though the experiment succeeded in some cases 

 it failed in others ! Mus decumanus, the Brown Eat, which 

 Landt refers to as 'Mus amphihius, the Great or New Eat," 

 was brought to the islands in the year 1768, in a wrecked 

 Norwegian vessel. I have no doubt that this formidable 



