22O Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. Ill, 



It indicates a full-grown but not old individual, apparently a male, 

 so far as can be determined from the skin. The specimen may 

 be described as follows : 



Size large ; pelage coarse. Length of head and body (approximate from the 

 skin), 330 mm. ; tail vertebrae, 135 ; tail to end of hairs, 146 ; hind foot, 44. 

 Color black or brownish black, with the usual white areas and markings very 

 much restricted, as follows : The light spot on the forehead is pale creamy white, 

 about the size of an ordinary pea ; the lunate spot in front of each ear pale 

 creamy white, very small, less than half an inch in extreme length, very narrow, 

 and widely separated from the light area on the side of the neck ; the two inner 

 dorsal white stripes begin at the usual point, but are mere lines of creamy white, 

 in places irregularly obsolete ; the outer dorsal stripe begins behind the ear as a 

 broad, clavate, deep cream-colored patch, narrowing posteriorly ; the flank stripe, 

 like all of the body markings, is deep cream color, and while of the usual pattern 

 is very narrow, being only about one-half as wide as the black stripe above it, 

 instead of much wider, as in S. putorius and allied forms. The thigh patches 

 are little more than small tufts of creamy white hairs, and a mixture of such 

 hairs with black at the base of the tail represents the usual rump patch. The 

 white in the tip of the tail forms a broad terminal pencil, which extends forward 

 on the lower surface of the tail for about an inch. 



The buffy tint of the light markings may be merely individual, since a similar 

 phase occurs in allied forms. 



According to Mr. Alston* the genus Spilogale ranges southward 

 to Yucatan and Guatemala, whence specimens are represented in 

 the collections of M. Boucard and the British Museum, but I find 

 no descriptions of these specimens. Dr. Merriam, in his recent 

 revision of the genus,f has described a species based on two skulls 

 from Indianola, Matagorda Bay, Texas, as S. indianola, the skins, 

 and therefore the external characters, being unknown. Unfor- 

 tunately the skull of the Tamaulipas specimen is too imperfect to 

 furnish any basis for comparison with the Indianola specimens. 

 For the present it may be best to provisionally refer this specimen 

 to S. indianola Merriam, since he suggests that it is u probably a 

 Mexican tropical species extending north along the Gulf coast of 

 Texas." 



5. Dicotyles tajacu (Ltnn.). Several specimens from various 

 localities in Texas and Tamaulipas. 



* Biol. Centr.-Am., Mam., p. 83. 



t North Amer. Fauna, No. 4, Oct., 1890, pp. 1-16, pi. i. 



