368 Mr. O. Thomas on 
anywhere. Under surface little paler than back. Kars 
short, practically naked, brown. Hands and feet brown. 
Tail about the length of the head and body, slender, very 
finely haired, the terminal part naked below. 
Dimensions of the type (a male in skin) :— 
Head and body 151 millim.; tail 144; hind foot (moist- 
ened) 23; ear (moistened) 12x 11°5; heel to end of hallux 
14:2; hallux 3:2. 
Skul]: basal length 33:5; greatest breadth 18; nasals, 
length 17°8; intertemporal breadth 7; palate length from 
enathion 20°7; length of palatine foramina 6:2; combined 
lengths of +3 5-1. Lower jaw: tip of 77 to condyle 28:5. 
Hab. Bogota. Coll. by G. D. Child, May 7, 1895. 
Tomes’s “‘Hyracodon” fuliginosus was said to be of the 
size of a water-shrew (P. Z. 8. 1860, p. 213), and the 
measures given in its fuller description in 1863 show that 
this comparison was not incorrect, while his account of the 
teeth gives no indication that his example was young. The 
specific distinction of the Bogota form seems therefore clear. 
The rediscovery of this long-lost genus, whose wide distine- 
tion from all other living marsupials its original describer 
does not appear to have at all fully appreciated, is one of the 
most interesting events in mammalogy that has happened for 
many years. A full description of the animal, its skull and 
dentition, will be given elsewhere ; but it may be here briefly 
stated (1) that Cwnolestes represents among the marsupials a 
family, and, perhaps, a suborder, entirely different from any 
other now living; and (2) that it is closely related to, and 
evidently a surviving representative of, some of the fossil 
marsupials from the Santa Cruz beds of Patagonia. In fact 
it seems undoubtedly to fall into the family Epanorthide of 
the suborder Paucituberculata, both groups founded by Senor 
F, Ameghino. The beds from which the fossil Kpanorthidee 
were obtained have been said by Mr. Lydekker, to whom I 
am indebted for assistance in tracing the relationships of 
Cenolestes, to be of Upper Oligocene or early Miocene age, 
while Sefior Ameghino considers them to be Hocene. 
Apart from this, the survival to the present day of a member 
of so ancient a group, otherwise wholly extinct, is a fact of 
the utmost interest, and one whose discovery will be welcomed 
by every zoologist. 
Oryzomys instans, sp. n. 
A middle-sized Oryzomys with forwardly projected incisors. 
Fur soft and straight, about 8 millim. long on the middle 
