40 Mr. O. Thomas on 



Further consitleration induces me to think that this latter 

 character might be made the basis of a siibgeneric division of 

 Grison^ and that the species without tlie cusp should form a 

 special subgenus, which might be called Grisonella and have 

 Gr.furax as its type. 



In Chili, instead of there being only one form of Grison 

 present, it now appears there are two, a larger and a smaller, 

 the former inhabiting Central Chili and the latter South 

 Chili, whence three specimens have been sent to the British 

 Museum by Messrs. Bullock and Saldanha. The question 

 therefore arises as to which of these animals should bear the 

 specific names cuja and qniqui given to members of this 

 genus by Molina, and also that of " var. chilensis^^ assigned 

 by Nehring* in rather a casual wav to a skull from " Chili." 



The specimens received from S. Chili (Temuco) are marked 

 as being called '' Cuya ^' by the natives; and since Molina 

 said his " Mastela cuja " was of the size of a ferret, which 

 suits the Temuco Grison very well and the large Central 

 C^Jhili one not at all, I propose to identify the ci//a as being 

 this animal, whose name would therefore be Grison {Grison- 

 ella) cuja, Mol. 



And further, Molina's Mastela quiqui can hardly be other- 

 wise than the same animal, for it is said to be a weasel 

 ("donnola"j about 13 inches in length from nose to base 

 of tail, and while a female G. cuja measures 13 and a male 

 15 inches in length, the Central ('hili species attains not less 

 than 17 inches in the female and up to 2-4 in the male f. 



Nehring's chilensis is unquestionably a female of the small 

 species (basilar length of skull 58 mm.). 



A male skull of this species is 70 mm. in condylo-basal 

 length, and a female 64*5. 



All three Chilian names being therefore applicable to the 

 smaller species of S. Chili, the question arises as to what the 

 name of the larger Central Chili species should be. 



Careful comparison, however, shows that this animal 

 cannot be distinguished from the Argentine " Huron,'' which 

 has been hitherto considered the same as the Brazilian 

 G.furax. 



But the latter is a much more buffy-coloured animal than 



* Zool. Jahrb. Syst. i. p. 189 (1886). 



f Not kuowiug that a small species of Grisou occurred in S. Chili, 

 Burmeister (' La Plata,' iii. p. 160) supposed that the Quiqui was the 

 young- of the ordinary " Huron." But Molina gave a general account 

 of its habits, evidently knowing the species well, while as to the number 

 of its teeth the frequent loss of p^ and m2 makes specimens with only 

 twenty-eight teeth by no means rare. 



