1890.] SOUTH-AMERICAN CANID^. 103 



slenderer beast of the two, and that it has a fuller and softer coat ; 

 but the colour of the limbs he regards as the great character, the 

 reddish-yellow tract being separated sharply from the grey body by 

 a transverse blackish mark. 



The skull of Burmeister's C. griseus is much smaller than that of 

 his C. azarce, but the difference is by no means greater than I have 

 met with between specimens of undoubtedly the same species of other 

 kinds of Canida. He speaks, indeed, of a distinction in the length of 

 the premaxillse, but his plate does not agree with the statement. The 

 dentition of both is extremely similar. In his ' Reise durch La Plata,' 

 p. 407, he gives a table of the dimensions of the teeth in most of 

 the species considered in this paper. The combined length of the 

 upper molars is there stated to be 1/ in C. asarcE and 13 in O. griseus ; 

 while the length of the fourth upper premolar is 15 in C. azarce 

 and 12 in C. griseus ; or the premolar to the molars as 100 to 112 

 in O. azar(e and as 100 to 108 in C. griseus, a diflFereuce which is 

 practically no difference at all. 



No one, I venture to think, who has worked at the varieties of the 

 Wolf and the Fox, can attach great importance to a distinction reposing 

 upon the limbs being "grey" or "reddish yellow," or upon a soft- 

 enmg of the colour of the soles of the feet from a blackish brown into 

 a reddish brown. There remains the transverse blackish band across 

 the proximal part of the limbs. But this cannot constitute a dis- 

 tinctive character, for it exists most distinctly on the hind limbs of the 

 type ofC.fulvipes, where it sharply marks off the red colour below it. 

 The same is the case in the skin of O. azarce, No. 55. 12. 24. 238, 

 and to a less degree in the skin brought by Burnett and Fitzroy 

 from Patagonia. 



The teeth not only agree with those of C. azarce, but the teeth of 

 these two forms agree in differing very markedly from another South- 

 American form which I take to be represented by the O. vetulus of 

 Burmeister. I cannot, on the evidence before us, accept the 

 C. griseus of Burmeister as an established species, especially on 

 tlie strength of a single skin ' and skull. 1 would provisionally 

 regard it as a variety of C. azarce coming from Sandy Point in the 

 Straits of Magellan. The C. griseus of Gray must be simply ignored. 



(4) Ca7iis patagonicus is a species which was proposed by Philippi 

 (Archiv f. Natur. xxxii. (1866) i. vol. p. 116) (or a skin from the 

 Straits of Magellan without a skull. He rests its distinctness from 

 C. azarcB on its shorter tail ; its hair being shorter and not so thick, 

 arid of a yellowish-grey colour ; its bristly hairs being softer and' 

 whiter ; the dark colour of the chin extending back " six lines " 

 further beyond the angle of the mouth ; the limbs being less white 

 externally ; the hairs of the tail being shorter (as well as the tail 

 Itself), with its under-fur ashy grey instead of yellow and having its 

 black hairs so disposed as to form about ten transverse rings alter- 

 nating with white, and the claws being pure-pointed, indicating that 

 the animal did not burrow. 



I Burmeister (Erliiut. p. 50) uses the expression "Mein Exemplar stammt 

 von Punta de las Arenas." 



