NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 13 



more extensive, to include the entire head and lower surfaces, 

 and extend back along the side of the neck to the shoulder, 

 whence it continues in scattered long white hairs to the 

 haunches. There is no distinct white mark on the nape. 



The first definite knowledge of this species is due to Poey, 

 who obtained specimens in the mountains east of Bayamo, 

 where it was said to be well known, and he published an account 

 of it with a colored plate in his "Memorias sobre la Historia 

 Natural de Cuba" in 1851. He, however, supposed it to be the 

 same as the species of Hispaniola, and after search in the earlier 

 accounts of Cuban animals, failed to identify it with any known 

 to the early historians of the country. For this reason, he 

 proposed that it be called the almiqui, a name derived from 

 that of one of the mountains near where his specimens were 

 taken, in the region east of Bayamo. Gundlach subsequently 

 obtained it near Trinidad, about halfway of the length of the 

 island of Cuba, to the westward. In 1886, he sent three to the 

 United States National Museum that he secured from the high 

 mountains about 30 miles from Bayamo. One of these was 

 exhibited alive at a meeting of the Biological Society of Wash- 

 ington (Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, vol. 4, p. x, 1886). It was 

 the surviving adult male of a family of three, of which the adult 

 female and her young one succumbed during the journey from 

 Cuba, and was said by Dr. F. W. True (1886) to be destined 

 for the zoological garden at Philadelphia. Even at that time 

 the animal seems to have become rare, for Gundlach wrote 

 that it had been secured only after "the promise of many 

 years" by the same person who had supplied specimens pre- 

 viously to himself and Poey. No more are known to have been 

 captured until 1909, when two Swedish engineers secured a 

 live one in the mountains of eastern Cuba. This animal died 

 soon after, and its remains were sent to the Riksmuseum at 

 Stockholm. Two photographs taken before its death are repro- 

 duced by Dr. Erna Mohr (1937a) and are apparently the only 

 ones that show the living animal. At about the same time a 

 second specimen (or possibly the same one) was in captivity 

 in the possession of M. Bofell, director of the Municipal 

 Museum of Santiago. According to Paul Serre (1910) it had 

 been captured by laborers near Baracoa, in extreme eastern 

 Cuba, in the course of road construction. Its owner is said to 

 have refused various offers to buy it, but its subsequent fate 



