320 Mr. O. Thomas on 



Crociditra goliath. 



This shrew is distinguished externally from all its allies 

 by the characters of the fur, which, instead of being close, 

 velvety, and practically all of one sort, as is tlie case with all 

 Crocidurce, is long, loose, coarse, and composed of two sort? 

 of hair, an underfar and a number of elongated bristles 

 double the length o£ the underfui-. In fact tlie fur is more 

 like tliat of a rat than a shrew. No approximation to the 

 condition in C. goliath is shown by any of the hirge number 

 of species of Crocidura. 



In the skull most of the characters are those ordinarily 

 correlated with the unusually large size of the animal, sucli 

 as the great development of the cranial ridges and the 

 roughening of the surface of the bones. In the pterygoid 

 region, however, there is a peculiarity distinctive of 

 C. goliath — namely, that there is practically none of the 

 inflation and broadening of the pterygoids so marked in 

 typical Crocidura, the ectopterygoids being scarcely percep- 

 tible and the entopterygoids being mei'e thin vertical plates 

 parallel with each other, and with the hamular processes set 

 symmetrically at their tips instead of converging inwards 

 over the mesopterygoid fossa. As a result of the reduction 

 in the dilation of the pterygoids, the whole pterygoid region 

 is much narrower, as may be gauged by the fact that the 

 distance between the notches at the inner ends of the glenoid 

 processes of the two sides is little more than the breadth of 

 either of the glenoid processes themselves, while in Crocidura 

 this distance is nearly twice the breadth of each glenoid 

 process. 



This character of the breadth between the glenoid notches 

 will readily separate C. goliath from any members of Croci- 

 dura, even where, as is the case in certain large African 

 species, the inflation of the pterygoids is not so marked as it 

 is in the small and more typical species, such as C. russula 

 and C. leucodon. On the other hand, some of tlie large 

 Indian species of Pachyura have the pterygoid region more 

 like that of C. goliath^ but these are of course distinguished 

 by their greater number of teeth. 



As a generic name for C. goliath I would suggest PrcBsorex. 



Sylvisorex somereni. 



The moment that Prcesorex goliath is removed from the 

 genus Crocidura the reasons which induced me, though witii 

 much hesitation, to include in the genus Sylvisorex the 

 remarkable species described under the above name fall to the 



