NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 



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islands apparently local races differing in slight characters of 

 size or proportion are recognizable, points to an introduction 

 of agoutis at a long-distant period or else they reached their 

 present localities by occasional accident at equally remote 

 times. On a visit to Grenada in 1910, I inquired of native 

 hunters, who agreed that an agouti still occurred in the moun- 

 tain forests of the interior, but I was unable to secure a speci- 

 men. In the nearby group of small islands known as the 

 Grenadines, Austin H. Clark tells me that an agouti has been 

 introduced at the southeastern end of the island of Bequia, but 

 apparently it has not thrived, perhaps on account of the lack 

 of water. The Museum of Comparative Zoology has a skin of 

 the Antillean agouti from Grenada that was received about 

 1879. Another specimen, collected on Barbados about 1870, 

 came from Governor Rawson and presumably was of local 

 origin, though the agouti is not mentioned in Hughes 's account 

 of the natural history of Barbados in 1750. With the gradual 

 clearing of wooded areas on any of these islands and the intro- 

 duction of the mongoose (already common for a number of 

 years past on Grenada) it is tp be expected that agoutis will 

 eventually be extirpated from all the Lesser Antilles, perhaps 

 before specimens can be had sufficient to determine the extent 

 of their local variation. 



St. Vincent agouti (Dasyprocta albida) 



