92 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Museum, one of two or three collected by M. Plee, who lived 

 at Martinique from 1821-26. Another from the same collector 

 is said to be in the Leiden Museum. The Paris Museum has 

 another mounted one brought back by a M. Le Prieur (Pdate) 

 with no other locality but "des Antilles." The teeth of this 

 last specimen, but little worn, and the skull and worn dentition 

 of another are figured by Trouessart (1885). Exactly when the 

 Martinique musk-rat became extinct is difficult to say, but 

 that it may have existed up to the end of the nineteenth 

 century is indicated by the following statement communicated 

 to me by the late Dr. G. Kinsley Noble, who in 1914 visited 

 Guadeloupe and was told by a Mr. Delphin Duchamp, a 

 former resident of Martinique, that "about five years before 

 the eruption of Mount Pelee [1902] there used to exist in great 

 numbers among the cocoanut plantations along the Riviere 

 Blanche, close to St. Pierre, a species of rat which was black 

 as coal on the back and white as milk below. When adult 

 this creature was some 40 cm. long without the tail. I killed 

 many of them, for their flesh is very delicate. The negroes 

 call this rat the pilorie. It lives almost entirely in [Pamong] 

 the cocoanut trees but will take to water when driven from 

 shelter. I never heard of it occurring in any other part of the 

 island except on these plantations, and since this whole region 

 was destroyed by the great eruption of 1902, it is very probable 

 that the rat is now extinct." Inquiries among the hunters on 

 Guadeloupe showed that it was unknown to any of them as 

 occurring there, though they knew of its former presence on 

 Martinique. No doubt the devastating eruption of Pelee 

 accompanied by clouds of poisonous gas completed its destruc- 

 tion. 



Of the St. Lucia musk-rat, Trouessart (1885) records a speci- 

 men preserved in the Paris Museum and calls attention to 

 its smaller size and less amount of white below as compared 

 with the "pilorie" of Martinique. This individual was 

 brought back by Bonnecour some time previous to 1881. The 

 only other specimen extant seems to be the one now in the 

 British Museum, which served as the type of Forsyth Major's 

 "Oryzomys" luciae. This in turn was doubtless the one men- 

 tioned as received from St. Lucia by the Zoological Society 

 of London in 1849 (see Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1849, p. 105). 

 It was sent by Lieutenant Tyler and may have lived in London 



