ORDER RODENTIA: RODENTS 201 



appears to us the most appropriate method of securing their protection. In 

 the case of this particular species we shall hope to have received before the 

 next meeting of the Conference the data to be collected by the Italian Scien- 

 tific Mission. 



Hollister remarks (1919, p. 37) : "Although a few specimens of 

 the maned rat find their way into collections from time to time, 

 the animal is still so rare that no suitable series are available for 

 study. If all the collections in various museums were combined it 

 t would still be impossible to form any correct idea of the relation - 

 'ships of the named forms, and it will doubtless be many years before 

 sufficient material has accumulated." 



Under these circumstances the classification and nomenclature 

 in the following accounts of the known forms of Lophiomys must be 

 considered as no more than provisional. Possibly all the forms so 

 far described will eventually prove to be no more than subspecifically 

 distinct. All exhibit the same general color pattern. 



Sudan Maned Rat 



LOPHIOMYS AETHIOPICUS (Peters) 



Phractomys aethiopicus Peters, Zeitschrift Gesammten Naturwissens. Halle, 

 vol. 29, p. 195, 1867. (Based upon a skull from Maman, north of Kassala, 

 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.) 



FIG.: Anderson and de Winton, 1902, pi. 51. 



This species seems to be known chiefly from single specimens 

 collected at no more than about half a dozen localities in the Anglo- 

 Egyptian Sudan and Eritrea. 



Under the name of L. imhausi, Anderson .(in Anderson and de 

 Winton, 1902, p. 289) describes an adult female from Erkoweet(?), 

 on the mountains between Suakin and Sinkat, Sudan, somewhat as 

 follows: Denser fur generally gray at the base, with a broad white 

 band and wide brown tip; the long hairs broadly tipped with white; 

 a triangular white area on top of the head, prolonged backward 

 below the ears to the side of the neck, where the adpressed lateral 

 band of yellowish hairs commences; a white spot below the eye; 

 front and sides of head, throat, and sides of neck blackish brown; 

 under surface generally pale brown, with an admixture of white; 

 tip of tail white. Total length about 40 cm. (The brownish rather 

 than blackish tone possibly represents a discoloration that had 

 developed since the specimen was collected in 1880. A similar dis- 

 coloration is now observable in the type of L. smithi Rhoads.) 



In writing of this specimen, Giglioli says (1881, p. 45) : "The 

 Natives told Count Marazzani that the Lophiomys is rare, that it 

 lives in deep holes in the strangely fissured rocks of that country." 

 He also records a specimen killed at Keren in the Bogos country, 

 Eritrea, in 1870. 



