SCIUBIDiE— SCIURUS iESTUANS AND VARIETIES. 



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tlie inner side of tlic limbs like the hcWy ; sometimes, however, the foot ivin 

 colored liko the belly, the color of the ventral surface also sometimes invad- 

 ing the outer surface of the limbs. The sides of the face and chin vary from 

 grayish-brown to deep yellow or orange. 



Specimens from Venezuela are smaller, and are undistinguishable from var. 

 aaluansaboye, but still retain the bright-red edging of the tail, wliich is, how- 

 ever, lighter or more golden than in Costa Rica specimens. This form ap|)ears 

 to extend, with very slight modifications, southward through New Granada to 

 Eastern Peru. 



GKNEBAL BEMABKS UPON 8CIURU8 /G8TUANS AND ITS VARIETIES. 



Differential characters. — The two varieties of Sciurus eestuam differ 

 in the larger size and more reddish coloration of the northern form, and 

 especially in respect to the color of the tail. Var. rufonigcr averages fully an 

 inch longer than var. astuans; the color is much more rufous, the tjvil broadly 

 edged with red instead of narrowly edged with pale yellow, and the ventral 

 surface is deep reddish-orange instead of reddish-yellow. In the tables of 

 measurements, the tail appears to be relatively the shorter in var. rufoniger, 

 but the difference is not real. In the case of var. astuans, the measurements 

 were taken from specimens preserved in alcohol, while the measurement f 

 var. rufoniger were taken from skins, from the tails of which the verte e 

 had generally been removed, leaving merely the shrunken distorted skin. 



Synontmy and nomenclature. — Linnseus's description of Sciurus astu- 

 'ns was based on specimens from Surinam, and is the same animal as the S. 

 brasiliensis of Marcgrave and Brisson. The name mstuans is the one by which 

 the Brazilian Squirrel has generally been recognized by authors. For a long 

 time, the only prominent synonym was pusiltus, a MS. name given by 

 Geoffrey to young specimens from Cayenne, in the Paris Museum, which 

 name appears to have been first published by Desmarest in 1817. This is 

 also the origin of Buffon's "PelU Guerlinguet", and the £cureuil nain of 

 other French authors. For many years, these names all uniformly referred to 

 the original example in the Paris Museum.* Gray, in 1867, referred to a 

 second specimen, "four and a half inches long" (head and body), as being in 

 the British Museum, from "Tropical America". I have before me another, 

 from Brazil, which I believe to be only a very young example of S. eestuans, 



* "Hue tninru & Ciijenne; c'eat de liV que Labonlo envoyit ii BiitTun le sonl iadividii qiiijusqu'^ 

 pr^ut, ait it6 d^orit."— (F. Cuvikr, Diol. da Scienca Xal. torn, xiv, ISIO, p. 248.) 



