88 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



known examples were taken about 1877, only five years after 

 the introduction of that carnivore into the island. These 

 specimens are in the United States National Museum. An 

 earlier example preserved in the British Museum was made, in 

 1898, the type of the present species by Thomas, who describes 

 its color briefly as dull rufous above, rather richer on the rump 

 and grayer on the head, with a slight lining of black on the 

 back; under side dull yellowish, not sharply defined, the hairs 

 slaty gray basally; tail about as long as head and body, nearly 

 naked, hands and feet dull whitish. Total length about 10 

 inches (252 mm.) of which the tail is slightly more than half: 

 hind foot, 29.2; length of skull, 30.5 (Goldman, 1918). 



This rice rat, as Thomas pointed out in his original descrip- 

 tion, is very similar to the mainland 0. couesi or some of its 

 Central American races. Indeed, it seems doubtful if it 

 should not be regarded as identical with some one of them, for, 

 as the only cricetine rodent known from the Greater Antillean 

 islands, it is obviously a recent intrusion in a rodent fauna 

 otherwise of a hystricoid type. In his review of the North 

 American rice rats, Goldman (1918) compares the skull with 

 that of typical couesi of Yucatan and Honduras but finds 

 relatively few points of difference, namely, that the nasals 

 reach slightly farther back beyond the premaxillaries, the 

 maxillary arm of the zygoma is heavier, and the anterior 

 palatine foramina are shorter than usual in couesi. Since, 

 however, only the two specimens in the U. S. National Museum 

 (from Metcalfe Parish and Spanish Town, respectively) were 

 available for comparison, it seems likely that these differences 

 may not be very significant. Without further evidence to the 

 contrary the name may for the present be retained, but at the 

 same time the possibility is recognized that the animal may 

 have been a rather recent introduction through human agency. 

 That it nevertheless thrived and multiplied is evident from the 

 fact that Dr. H. E. Anthony (1920a) in exploring caves along 

 the seacoast of Jamaica found none of the subfossil types of 

 hystricoid rodents in them, though they often did yield "re- 

 mains of the extinct rice rat, thus showing that at no very 

 remote period this small rodent had a widespread distribution 

 and was so common that it formed an important part of the 

 diet of the barn owl," by which evidently they were brought 

 in to the caves. "The reason for its disappearance obviously 



