376 MAMMALS 



of any similar animal elsewhere in the Bahamas. An animal so helpless and 

 easily destroyed as the Hutia may, however, have formerly existed at many 

 points in the Bahamas and Antilles, where it is now extinct. 



" The first European explorers of the West Indies found these peculiar rat- 

 like animals abundant in various parts of the Antilles, and vague descriptions 

 of them were given under their various native names by the writers of the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, notably by Oviedo in his ' Historia general 

 de las Indias,' published in 1547, and later by Eochefort, Duturtre, and 

 Browne. As these little beasts were in great quest as food, from the delicacy 

 of their flesh, by both the natives and the Spanish colonists, they quickly began 

 to become scarce, a fact noted even by Oviedo, who says they were hunted by 

 dogs brought from Spain. They were so common in Jamaica at the time of 

 Columbus's visit that he is said to have ' victualled the famous canoe expedi- 

 tion of Diego Mendez with them." ' The narrators of his voyage make fre- 

 quent mention of their abundance not only in the Bahamas and at Jamaica, 

 but also in Cuba and Hispaniola. Oviedo speaks of three kinds, and later 

 writers mentioned others, without, however, describing them so as to give a 

 very clear conception of their characters. They have been referred to as oc- 

 curring throughout the Greater Antilles, except in Porto Rico, and in the 

 Bahamas. The earlier natural history compilers introduced them into their 

 works, greatly to the distraction of later systematic writers. 



"Although these animals are apparently still not uncommon at certain lo- 

 calities on the larger islands, they have doubtless everywhere greatly decreased 

 in numbers, and probably at many points have been wholly extirpated. Though 

 said to be still common in Hayti and San Domingo, and in portions of Cuba, 

 they have been practically exterminated in Jamaica. Specimens, however, are 

 very rare in collections, and even at this late day our knowledge of the group 

 is very inexact, while some of the forms have doubtless already become extinct." 



RACCOONS. 



PEOCYON MAYNARDI Bangs. 

 Procyon maynardi Bangs, 1898, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., vol. xii, p. 92. 



An animal of North American affinities. It was unquestionably intro- 

 duced from the mainland, but it is now known from New Providence only. 



An adult male of the Bahama raccoon was brought to Mr. Eiley on June 

 23, 1903, at Nassau. The animal is fully adult, though not aged. (Plate 



Zool. Journ., Vol. IV, 1829, p. 277. 



