1870. | PROF. A. NEWTON ON CRICETUS NIGRICANS. 331 
I am enabled to add that the diagnosis then made of the species is 
quite confirmed, and that the specimen was very nearly, but not quite, 
adult, the epiphyses of the bodies of the vertebrae having become 
united throughout the caudal and the greater part of the lumbar, 
but not in the thoracic and cervical regions. The transverse processes 
of the cervical vertebrae, from the second to the sixth inclusive, are 
joined at their extremities, so as to form complete rings. The 
seventh has no inferior process. There are fifteen pairs of ribs; the 
first with a very short capitular process, the second and third with 
long capitular processes ; the fifteenth rudimentary on both sides, 
as in the skeleton now in the Alexandra Park. The sternum is in the 
form of a short broad cross, the xiphoid process being less developed 
than usual; its greatest breadth is 23 inches, its length 154 inches. 
The skeleton belongs to Mr. D. Harris, of the ‘‘ Museum Gar- 
dens,”’ near Kingston Church, Portsea, where, when the preparation 
of the bones is completed, it is to be mounted and exhibited. 
8. On Cricetus nigricans as a European Species. 
By Aurrep Newron, M.A., V.P.Z.S., &. 
(Plate XXVI.) 
The skin of a small Rodent, brought from Turkey in Europe, and 
lately presented to the Museum of the University of Cambridge by 
Mr. Thomas Edward Buckley, B.A., of Trinity College, and a Fel- 
low of this Society, was clearly of a species not generally included 
as a member of the European fauna by writers who have made that 
subject their especial study. My friend Mr. Edward Alston, who 
has paid particular attention to the smaller mammals, on the speci- 
men being shown to him, speedily recognized in it the Cricetus 
nigricans of Brandt; but as he arrived at this conclusion only from 
the description given in Wagner’s Supplement to Schreber’s great 
work *, and as, so far as I know, no other examples of the species 
exist in this country, I thought it safest to forward the specimen 
to Professor Peters, who has kindly informed me that, except being 
brighter in colour, he did not find the least difference between it 
and types of that species in the Berlin Museum. I accordingly 
now have the pleasure of exhibiting the specimen and of offering a 
few remarks on the species. 
Cricetus nigricans, Brandt, was first described, in 1832, by Mé- 
nétriés, in his well-known ‘ Catalogue’y, as having been procured by 
him on the mountains of the Caucasus. In a review of this work, 
three years later, Dr. Gloger t expressed his opinion that it was not 
* Die Stugethiere u. s. w. von Schreber, Supplementband, iii. p. 451. Er- 
langen: 1843. 
+ Catalogue raisonné des objets de zoologie recueillies dans une Voyage au 
Caucase, &ec. p. 22. St. Pétersbourg: 1832. 
t Jahrbiicher fiir wissenschaftliche Kritik, No. 88 (May 1835) pp. 718, 719. 
