620 Mr. 0. Thomas on 



L. apicalis, both of which we now have, he seems only 

 to have done his describing from one of them (B.M. no. 

 53. 10. 22. 14) — the worst of the two, young, and with an 

 imperfect tail. Probably from memory, and certainly 

 wrongly, he stated that the species had a white-tipped tail, 

 but his overlooked second specimen — adult^ with nearly 

 perfect skull and quite perfect tail (B.M. no. 53. 10. 22. 14) 

 — lias the latter organ uniformly blackish or brownish above 

 and dull white below, and there is no indication of the white 

 tail-tip found in so many Australasian Muridte. 



When first making the genus Leporillus, I assigned 

 '■^ IJapalotis^^ murinus to it as a second species, but have 

 since come to tlie conclusion that that animal should be 

 referred to Fseudomys, in which genus it is probably synony- 

 mous with Ps. australis. 



The Long-haired Rat of Central Australia. 



In his ' List of Mammals in the British Museum ' (1843) 

 Gray cited two rats from the Liverpool Plains, New South 

 Wales, under the name of Pseudomys greyi — a name, however, 

 which is doubly invalid, being a nonien nudum and there 

 having been already a Mus [■=Ratius) greyi in existence. 



These specimens I formerly assigned to Gould's Mus 

 longipilis { = villosissimus, Waite), a species stated to have 

 been collected on the " Expedition to the Victoria River." 

 As may be gathered from tlie Diary of the Expedition'^, the 

 Victoria River was the same as tiie Barcoo, or Cooper's 

 Creek, which runs into Lake-Eyre, Central Australia. It is 

 therefore in very much the same region as that in which 

 Mr. Waite's specimens were obtained, and is in the same 

 faunal area as Alexandria Station, Northern Territory, where 

 our large series of villosissimus was captured by Mr. Stalker f. 



Compared with these latter, the Liverpool Plains examples, 

 in sj)ite of their considerable geographical distance, prove to 

 be so similar that I should consider them as being of the 

 same species, but would propose subspecific distinction for 

 them : — 



Rattus villosissimus prof usus^ subsp. n. 



Size rather less than in average villosissimus. Fur exces- 

 sively long, even longer than in villosissimus, and much 

 thicker and softer, quite different from the comparatively 



* J. Geog. Soc, xxii. p. 228 et seqq. (1852). 

 t P. Z. S. 1906, p. 537. 



