1908.] Allen, Mammalogical Notes. 587 



Fox" of Browne is the Mustela barbara of Linnseus; (2) that the Guinea 

 Fox was brought from Guiana and not from Guinea, as stated by Browne. 

 As will be shown later early authors, from Pennant clown, accepted Browne's 

 Guinea as Guinea and not as Guiana. 1 As a further indication that Guinea 

 in Africa was referred to, we find under Hystrix (p. 487): "This creature 

 is seldom seen in Jamaica', though frequent enough on the coast of Guinea, 

 from whence it is sometimes brought there in the African ships." It is fur- 

 ther to be noted that in referring to animals brought from continental 

 America he nowhere uses any other expression than "the main continent." 



On the basis, apparently, of Gray and Palmer, Elliot in 1905 (Check- 

 List of the Mammals of the North American Continent, etc. p. 418) 

 adopted "Galera Browne" as the proper generic designation of the Tayra 

 and Grison groups, with "Type Mustela barbara Linnaeus." In 1907 

 he (Cat. Coll. Mamm. in Field Columbian Museum, 1907, pp. 442, 443) 

 continued the same use of Galera. 



The history of the case of Galera is as follows: Patrick Browne in his 

 'Civil and Natural History of Jamaica' (fol., 1756), proposed the name 

 Galera (1. c., p. 485), in a generic sense, for an animal he called "the Guinea 

 Fox," of which he gave a rude figure (I. c., pi. 49, fig. 1) and a very brief 

 account. Two editions of this work appeared, the second bearing date 

 1789, which are textually the same, except that the second has a new title- 

 page, a new map, and "Four additional indexes [unpaged] to Dr. Brown's 

 [sic] Natural History of Jamaica." 2 The latter are simply a concordance 

 of the systematic names of the author, of both the plants and animals, and 

 those of Linnaeus. 



Galera Browne dates from the first edition of his 'History,' which was 

 published two years before the beginning of binomial nomenclature. Its 

 republication in the second edition (1789) was without change, except that 

 to the plate was added "Fig. 1. Mustela barbara?," evidently based on 

 Linnseus's references to Browne in the 10th and 12th editions of his Syst. 

 Nat., as noted below. 



Erxleben (Hist. Reg. Anim., 1777, p. 453) identified Browne's "Galera" 

 with the "Vansire" of Madagascar, and with the "Koekeboe" of Guinea 



1 Thus Pennant, in his 'Synopsis of Quadrupeds' (1771, p. 225, Nos. 160 and 161), and also 

 later in his 'History of Quadrupeds,' has a "Guinea Weesel" based on Browne's Galera, and a 

 "Guiana Weesel," based on Mustela barbara Linnaeus. . 



2 A collation of the two editions shows that the second differs from the first as follows: 

 (1) a new and considerably altered title-page; (2) a new and greatly improved map of Jamaica, 

 dated 1774; (3) a systematic concordance of Browne's plant and animal names with those of 

 Linnaeus, forming 23 unpaged leaves, and entitled as above; (4) the plates are regngraved (and 

 reversed), and are much more coarsely done than the originals, with S9metimes slight omission 

 of details; and in place of the names of the draftsman (" G. D. Ehret delin. 1755 ") and engravers 

 ("Patton Sculp.," and others, on different plates) are added at the bottom of the plates the 

 technical names of the objects delineated, which were not given on the original plates; (5) the 

 first three signatures of the main text (pp. 1-12) have been reset, with Tery-tiUght verbal changes, 

 but the pagination is unchanged. The rest of the text consists evidently of "left-over" sheets, 

 utilized for a second edition. 



