NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 111 



changes take place there, such as clearing, or the introduction 

 of goats or mongooses, its future would at once be in danger. 

 How it originally reached this isolated little spot, whether 

 through introduction by aborigines or by rafting at some pre- 

 historic time from elsewhere, is still an unanswered question. 



CUBAN SHORT-TAILED HUTIA 

 GEOCAPROMYS COLUMBIANUS (Chapman) 



Capromys columbianus Chapman, Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. 4, p. 314, 1892 



("Cave near Trinidad," Cuba). 

 SYNONYMS: Synodontomys columbianus G. M. Allen, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 61, 



p. 5, 1917; Geocapromys cubanus G. M. Allen, ibid., p. 9. 

 FIGS.: Chapman, 1892, fig. 3 (type, maxillary bone, and tooth); Allen, G. M., 1917, 



pi., figs. 7-9 (teeth). 



This short-tailed hutia is not known from living specimens, 

 yet it must have been common in Cuba up till relatively 

 recent times. It was first made known by Dr. Frank M. Chap- 

 man from a half-palate lacking the teeth and from a few other 

 fragments discovered in a cave near Trinidad, Cuba, "asso- 

 ciated with the remains of birds^and bats, and also fragmentary 

 pieces of the bones of Capromys." " The cave is situated in the 

 southern slope of the coral limestone coast range at an altitude 

 of about seven hundred feet, and within two hundred feet of 

 the summit of this part of the range . . . The floor of 

 the cave was covered to the depth of several feet with a red, 

 ferruginous earth, and on this was a layer four or five inches in 

 depth of a dark earth in which the bones" were found. 



On account of the fragmentary nature of the original speci- 

 mens and of other later-discovered remains, satisfactory com- 

 parisons of this Cuban hutia with other forms of the genus are 

 yet to be made. It would be important to know the relations 

 of the audital bullae to the level of the basioccipital bone, 

 which might indicate a relationship with the Bahaman Geo- 

 capromys on the one hand or to the Jamaican and Swan 

 Island species on the other. Dr. Chapman notices the strongly 

 converging upper tooth rows, which, however, as later finds 

 showed, do not actually touch in front on the palatal aspect. 

 The Cuban animal was evidently as large as the Jamaican G. 

 brownii. A median bony ridge on the roof of the palate ends 

 abruptly at the palatal margin in the latter and in G. thoracatus 

 is continued as a short median projection at that point. In 



