528 Mr. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton on the 



contrast between the rump and the remainder of the dorsal 

 region being less pronounced. Of the three Belgian speci- 

 mens only one is adult, but that (a female) seems to represent, 

 as miglit have been expected, a form intermediate between the 

 harvest-mouse of Brunswick and that of England. It has the 

 underside washed with yellow, but not in so marked a degree 

 as in the case of the Brunswick mice, while the coloration of 

 the upperside, being lighter and brighter, approaches in this 

 respect rather closely to the British form in its particular tint 

 of rufous. On the other hand, it agrees with the Brunswick 

 mice in the general uniformity of distribution of the colour. 

 For this subspecies a name is ready, at least provisionally, in 

 M. campestri's, Desmarest, a name applied, properly speaking, 

 to tiie harvest-mice of Northern France. These, however, 

 will probably prove to be identical with those of Belgium, 

 as, indeed, seems to be indicated by the coloured plate in 

 Trouessart's * Les Petits Mammif^ies de la France,' It is 

 now obvious that the Hungarian specimens can no longer be 

 regarded as representatives of the subspecies typicus ; the 

 proper name for them would seem to be M. pratensis, Ockskay, 

 a name which, as I have already stated, antedates Af. arundi- 

 naceus (Petenyi), Chyzer. It seems, then, better to restrict 

 the name typicus to Siberian specimens and to use the most 

 suitable German name for the harvest-mouse of Brunswick. 

 This appears to be M. agilis, Dehne, originally described 

 from Dresden. 



There seems to have been at one time or another con- 

 siderable uncertainty as to the subspecific name properly 

 applicable to the British harvest-mouse. The name messo- 

 rius, long attributed to Shaw, appears to have been first 

 used by Kerr, and its date having been thus carried back to 

 the year 1792, it might reasonably have been assumed that 

 we had reached the end of changes. I regret to find, how- 

 ever, that a name instituted by Gilbert White, and long 

 overlooked, takes precedence of even Kerr's use of the name 

 messortus. The British form will therefore more correctly 

 stand as Mus minutus minimus^ White, a change which 

 should be at all events gratifying when regarded as con- 

 necting the name of a British naturalist with that of a 

 British mammal. 



According to the specimens at my disposal, the arrange- 

 ment of the European and West Siberian subspecies may 

 stand provisionally as follows : — 



