THE LARGE INDIAN SQUIRREL. 299 



I believe it was as great a surprise to others as it was to myself to 

 hear that a new squirrel had been found in the Bombay Presidency. 

 I was not greatly astonished some years ago when a new Paradoxurus 

 {P. jerdoni) was found on the Anamalis,* but then a Paradoxurus is a 

 thoroughly nocturnal animal, and although in many parts of the country 

 one of the commonest mammals is very rarely seen, whereas squirrels 

 are diurnal in their habits, and are amongst the most familiar and con- 

 spicuous of the mammalia. 



When, however, Mr. Phipson placed in my hands three skins and 

 skulls of a peculiar pale squirrel obtained by Mr. R. C. Wroughton 

 in the Dangs, the fever-haunted and little-visited tract of forest be- 

 tween Khandesh and the coast land, south of the Tapti River, I was 

 convinced that something had been found very different from any 

 known Indian form. I subsequently received letters on the subject from 

 Mr. Wroughton himself and from Mr. G. W. Viclal, who later shewed 

 me a healthy young individual now living at his house near London, 

 and I quite agree with both gentlemen that this peculiar pale squirrel 

 is not an albino, but a well-marked and distinguishable race that may 

 be regarded as either a sub-species, or a species. I prefer to class it as 

 a sub-species, because there is, so far as I am aware, no structural 

 distinction between the pale animal and S. indicus, because many 

 mammals, and squirrels particularly, vary much in coloration, and 

 because there is, in the nearly allied but distinct S. bicolor, which 

 replaces S. indicus -in the Trans-Gangetic regions, and is found in the 

 Eastern Himalayas, Assam, Burma and Malayana, a very similarly 

 colored pale whitey-brown or cafe-au-lait race inhabiting part of the 

 Malay Peninsula. For the peculiar pale squirrel found in the Dangs 

 I propose the name Sciurus indicus var. dealhatus, or simply Sciurus 

 dealbatus. I also propose to call the unnamed variety of Western 

 Bengal and Orissa S. indicus var. bengalensis or S. bengalensis. 



* I am very sorry that I am sceptical as to the distinctness of Mr. Taylor's 

 P. nictitatans (this Journal, Vol. VI, p. 429, pi.) from Orissa. Mr. Taylor was so kind 

 as to send his type to me and to allow me to deposit it in the British Museum. It is 

 immature, and is, I think, a partial albino of P. niger. Albinism to a slight extent 

 had been observed in this species previously, part of the tail being occasionally white, 

 though I have never heard of an instance in which the white portions were as exten- 

 sive as in Mr. Taylor's specimen. Mr. Oldfleld Thomas, who examined the specimen 

 with me, agreed in this view. 

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