2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 66 



to the islands.^ Chance or man might have accounted for the pres- 

 ence of a few raccoons, agoutis, and cricetine rodents, especially 

 in the Lesser Antilles. The same was equally true of the hystricine 

 rodents (Capromys) of Cuba and Jamaica. The Cuban ground- 

 sloths were supposed to have been descended from ancestors which 

 " arrived '' from South America in the Miocene or from Central 

 America in the Pliocene. The insectivore Solenodon of Cuba and 

 Santo Domingo was so peculiar as to be scarcely within the range of 

 speculation ; while Plagiodontia, the indigenous rodent of Santo 

 Domingo, lost since 1836, had almost passed out of mind. 



In February, 1916, when recording Gabb's rediscovery of Pla- 

 giodontia, I said that the presence in the West Indies of three rodents 

 so different from each other as Plagiodontia, Capromys and Am- 

 blyrhiza indicated the probability of a once-abundant Antillean 

 representation of the hystricines.- Soon after my note was published 

 I received from Dr. J. A. Allen his account of Isolobodon portori- 

 censis, a previously unknown rodent from Porto Rico.^ In August 

 Mr. H. E. Anthony described * three further new genera of ex- 

 tinct Porto Rican mammals : a ground-sloth and two rodents, 

 Elasmodontomys and Neopsomys. He also recorded (p. 194) a 

 " fragmentary mandibular ramus, too incomplete for present deter- 

 mination, of a large hystricomorph rodent " apparently representing 

 a peculiar genus. The material from Cuba and Santo Domingo adds 

 still another genus of rodents from each island ; it further includes 

 the femora of two species not hitherto observed. All of these re- 

 cently identified rodents are hystricine, while there is every reason 

 to suppose that this is likewise the case with the undeterminable 

 species. The number of well established Antillean genera has thus 

 been increased within the year practically from two to eight, with the 

 indication that at least- one additional genus and perhaps more may be 

 represented among the three ^ species (one from Porto Rico and two 

 from Santo Domingo) whose status is now in doubt. 



^ That the geographic distribution of bats should not be regarded as primarily 

 a question of flight has been pointed out by Dobson (Rep. Brit. Ass. Adv. Sci. 

 for 1878, pp. 158-167), G. M. Allen (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., Vol. 54. PP- ^75- 

 176. 1911), and Andersen (Catal. Chiropt. Brit. Mus., Vol. i, pp. Ixxvi-lxxvii. 

 1912; see also Science, N. S., Vol. 36, pp. 526-527. October 18, ifli2). 



* Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, Vol. 29, p. 47. February 24, 1916. 

 ' Ann. New York Acad. Sci., Vol. 27, pp. 17-22. January 25, 1916. 



* Ann. New York Acad. Sci., Vol. 27, pp. 193-203. August 9, 1916. 



"The long bones (from Anguilla) of a supposed rodent about the size of an 

 agouti described and figured by Cope (Smithsonian Contr. Knowl., Vol. 25, 

 pp. 3-4, pi. I, figs. 4-6. 1883) are excluded as evidently those of a housecat. 



