2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 02 



by infiltrated lime drip. Other owl deposits of the same kind may have 

 once existed in the neighboring caves, but if so, they all appear to 

 have been removed years ago by guano diggers. The specimens 

 that we obtained in these caves and village sites form the subject 

 matter of the present paper. 



While no hitherto unknown species are represented in our col- 

 lections the material proves to be of much interest. It throws ad- 

 ditional light on the characters and distribution of the two species of 

 Plagiodontia that I recognized in 1927 as occurring in the Dominican 

 Republic (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., Vol. y2, Art. 16, pp. 1-8, Sept. 30, 

 1927) ; it furnishes the means to identify all four of the native mam- 

 mals, the hutia, the quemi, the mohuy and the cori, that Oviedo said 

 were habitually eaten by both natives and Spaniards during the early 

 years of the sixteenth century; and finally it shows beyond the possi- 

 bility of reasonable doubt that this recently extinct fauna included a 

 ground sloth. 



The identity of only two of the mammals that Oviedo ascribed to 

 the island of Hispaniola remains to be determined — the " dumb dog " 

 and the indigenous rat. The few dog bones collected appear to differ 

 in no way from the corresponding parts of European dogs, and there 

 is nothing to prove that they represent the native breed. Hence the 

 status of the famous " perro mudo," the dog that was unable to bark, 

 is still as much of a mystery as ever. Equally obscure is the question 

 as to whether or not there were rats on the island at the time of its 

 discovery. Oviedo relates that on inquiring into this matter he found 

 those who told him that *' mures 6 ratones " did in fact then exist ; 

 a circumstance that appeared to him quite believable because these 

 animals were so well known to be generated, like flies, mosquitoes, 

 wasps, and grubs, anywhere, out of any kind of putrifying matter, 

 a not unnatural belief at the time when he wrote, more than 125 

 years before Francisco Redi had published his " Esperienze Intorno 

 Alia Generazione Degl' Insetti." Nevertheless our search has failed to 

 reveal a trace of rats or mice other than the European species that 

 could have easily been brought by the Spaniards on their ships. After 

 enumerating the specimens that we obtained I shall return to the sub- 

 ject of Oviedo's mammals in greater detail. 



DESCRIPTION OF COLLECTING STATIONS 



I. Railroad cave. — A large cave situated about 15 minutes walk 

 inland along the abandoned railroad on the south shore of San Lorenzo 

 Bay. There is an extensive kitchenmidden at the entrance. I was 

 not able to find any trace of a bone deposit made by the extinct owl, 



