202 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



troduced into Barbados; but, although they increase rapidly at first, 

 the mange soon attacks the old ones, and the rats kill the young 

 before they are large enough to leave their burrows. 



AGOUTIDAE. 



Dasyprocta albida Gray. 



Dasyproeta albida Gray, Ann. Nat. Hist., 1842, 10, p. 264. 



Dasyprocta cristata Auct. 



Since 1876 the agoutis of the Lesser Antilles have been tacitly 

 referred to Dasyprocta cristata (Desmarest), following Alston, who, in 

 his paper on the genus (Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1876, p. 347-352) 

 wrote that West Indian specimens seemed identical with others which 

 Waterhouse had identified with Desmarest's species. Desmarest's 

 name dates from 1816, when he published the description, without 

 locality, in the Nouvelle Dictionnaire, 1, p. 213. Later, however, in 

 his Mammalogie (1820) he states that the species was known from two 

 specimens only that came from Surinam, and were living in captivity 

 at the Paris Museum. Desmarest knew the West Indian species, 

 which he considered the same as his D. acuti, found in Brazil, and 

 Guiana. The name cristata is therefore referable to some one of the 

 continental species of Dasyprocta. I have been able to examine 

 skins and skulls of but five Antillean agoutis, — two from Sta. Lucia, 

 and one from St. Vincent, in the collection of the Museum of Compara- 

 tive Zoology, and a single one each from the islands of Montserrat and 

 St. Kitts, kindly lent by the U. S. National Museum. I have also 

 studied material from Trinidad in the collections of these Museums 

 and of the American Museum of Natural History. From this small 

 series it is difficult to draw very certain conclusions, but it seems evi- 

 dent that the St. Vincent and Sta. Lucia specimens at least are readily 

 distinguishable from those of Trinidad. These latter may be assumed 

 as representing more or less closely the mainland animal, probably 

 the same as that which Thomas has named D. rubatra. The final 

 disposition of the name cristata remains still to be worked out. 



In 1842, J. E. Gray described and named as new an agouti from 

 the island of St. Vincent. This was apparently an albinistic individ- 

 ual, as shown by the brief diagnosis: "whitish gray, nearly uniform, 

 the hair of the back elongated, white at the base .... Size of a 

 guinea-pig, Cavia cobaya." Later writers have ignored this name, 







