ALLEN: MAMMALS OF THE WEST INDIES. 191 



different from E. orthotic of Jamaica. These wide-ranging bats of 

 the family Molossidae, however, would be less expected to show local 

 differentiation. All these five species may be assumed to have 

 reached Cuba and Jamaica by separate land connections to each 

 island. The fact that Nyctinomus macrotis and the genus Eumops 

 are still unknown from the other islands may indicate that their 

 arrival took place after both Cuba and Jamaica had lost connection 

 with the other Antilles. Too much stress must not be laid on this 

 negative evidence, however. The absence of Eptesicus from Jamaica, 

 too, may be merely apparent. A summary of the known bat fauna of 

 Cuba and Jamaica gives the former twenty-one and the latter nine- 

 teen species. There are six genera in Cuba that seem to have no 

 Jamaican representative, and four Jamaican genera that are unrep- 

 resented in Cuba. 



Of the connection of Cuba with Haiti and San Domingo there can 

 be no doubt, from the many genera or even species of animals that 

 they have in common. Of mammals, such are Solenodon and Ero- 

 phylla; perhaps too the long-tailed Capromys. It seems equally 

 evident, however, that it has long been separated from the other 

 Greater Antilles. Certain facts point also to a connection by way of 

 Jamaica, with San Domingo, and thence to Porto Rico and the 

 Bahamas, a land bridge that may have persisted after that between 

 San Domingo and Cuba had disappeared. Very significant here is 

 the distribution of the short-tailed members of the genus Capromys. 

 None is known from Cuba, but closely allied species are found in 

 Swan Island, Jamaica, and the Plana Keys, Bahamas. Doubtless 

 there was formerly a species also in San Domingo, if we may so 

 identify the "Cori" of Oviedo. There is no very adequate evidence 

 that any of the other animals described by Oviedo from this island 

 w r ere long-tailed Capromys. If they were, they may have been 

 specimens brought from Cuba, or they may have been Plagiodontia, 

 the significance of whose isolated habitat here it is now difficult to see. 

 At all events, the facts point to a land bridge from Central America 

 by way of Jamaica and San Domingo, over which the short-tailed 

 Capromys reached the Bahamas. In like manner may perhaps be 

 explained the occurrence of a bat in the Bahamas similar to Glosso- 

 phaga soricina antillarum of Jamaica. The genus is unknown from 

 Cuba, and indeed, for that matter, from San Domingo; but its 

 occurrence on the latter island may be postulated. According to 

 Andersen, a study of the genus Artibeus indicates that the San 

 Domingo and Porto Rico representatives of the species jamaicensis 



