568 Mr. P. S. Kcisliaw on neio 



tuniiy of putting on record some conclusions I have 

 readied : — 



(1) Taterona can be divided into forms with tufted and 

 forms with uutufted tails. The former are either heavily 

 tufted, as in the Asiatic genus Tdtera, e. g., Taterona nifjri- 

 caiida^ or slightly tufted, e. g., T. vtcinn. 



(2) The tufted forms are all, with one exception (T.guinece, 

 from Gunnal, in Portuguese Guinea), confined to Nortli-east 

 Africa. These are all to the north of a line drawn fiom 

 Mombasa to Morogoro, and thence to Muansa on the south 

 shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza, and of a line drawn from the 

 north-east corner of that lake to Mt. Elgon, and thence to 

 the Nile at the northern extremity of Lake Albert. The 

 nntufted forms are found all over Africa except the norih- 

 wcst, and share North-east Africa with the tufted forms. 



(3) In the untufted forms the posterior palatal foramina fire 

 short and in the tufted long. This is what we should exp' ct 

 to find, since, in the heavily tufted Tatera of Asia, the 

 posterior palatal foramina are very long. In Tatera persicn 

 they are almost as long relatively as in Taterilln.t. When*, 

 the posterior foramina are long, the space between the anterior 

 and posterior foramina is short, and vice versa. In the 

 untufted forms, of which there are thirty-one type-specimens 

 in the British Museum, this space measures anything from 

 3 to 5 mm., except in nigrita from Uganda, where it measures 

 2 6 mm. In the tufted forms, of wdiichthe Museum possesses 

 six type-skulls, it measures 2"5 to 3 mm., except in the 

 remote gxdnece (3"5 mm.) and in swaythlingif the southernmost 

 form (3'6 mm.). « 



I have treated as "tufted" in this paper T. robustn, ma- 

 crojrius, nigricauda, vicina, momhnsce, phil/ipsi', umhroaa, 

 shoana, potheri^ guinece, and sioaythlingi, and as " untufted " 

 all the other forms, ignorino: the sul)genus Gerhiiliscus. 



Vide also on this subject Hintcn aiui Kershaw, Ann. & ^lag. 

 Nat. Hist. (9) vi. p. 98 (July 1920). 



Raftiis 2'>ernanus, fip. n. 



Among a collection of skins sent by tlie Nairobi Museum 

 in the Kenya Colony to the British Museum recently for 

 identification, there are two of a liattus, which requires 

 description as a new form : — 



Ty/)e. Young adult male. B.M. no. 21. 9. 6. 15. Original 

 number 31. Colh^cted by Mr. R. B. Woosnam on 3rd Nov- 

 ember, 1912, and presented to the British Museum by the 

 Nairobi Museum. 



