208 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



Description. — General color a grizzled yellowish brown, paler on 

 the belly and tail, where the yellowish prevails. Short hairs about the 

 muzzle whitish, shading into pale russet between the nose and eyes. 

 Crown, nape, and entire dorsal surface and sides of body, and the 

 throat, a coarsely grizzled pale ochraceous and black, or Prout's 

 brown. The black is most prominent on the shoulders, and gives 

 place to Prout's brown on the sides and throat. The separate hairs 

 are hair-brown at the base, then black for one half or more of their 

 length, with a subterminal ring of ochraceous, succeeded usually by a 

 very small black tip. On the sides of the body the hair-brown is 

 much more extensive, nearly to the exclusion of the black. Numer- 

 ous entirely black hairs occur among the particolored hairs of the 

 back. Upper surfaces of the forearms and feet nearly clear Prout's 

 brown. Ears scantily clothed with short buffy hairs. Long hairs 

 about the base of the tail nearly clear ochraceous buff, giving place to 

 the shorter buffy hairs of the terminal three fourths. Ventral sur- 

 faces of the body and limbs nearly clear buffy, darkened by the hair- 

 brown bases which everywhere show through. The vibrissae are 

 numerous and long, the more dorsal ones black, the more ventral clear 

 white. 



A second specimen, also from the Casas Mountains of Nueva Gerona, 

 is quite similar in coloration, except that the hairs lack the ochraceous 

 tint, and are instead buff in their paler portions, producing thus a 

 much grayer effect. Neither specimen shows the rufous tint that is 

 so prominent in some specimens from Cuba, nor are there traces of 

 incipient albinism, such as are usually found in Cuban examples. 

 These characters, however, are subject to such variation in the typi- 

 cal race that it would be unsafe to assume that the Isle of Pines Cap- 

 romys may not occasionally be rufescent or albinistic. 



Skull. — The skull of C. pilorides relictus differs more widely, it 

 would seem, from that of C. pilorides pilorides, than does that of C. 

 prehensilis gundlachi, of the Isle of Pines, from the Cuban prototype. 

 It is about one sixth smaller, and proportionately lighter, with smaller 

 and more slender teeth. The form of the postpalatal fossa is remark- 

 ably different. In the Cuban pilorides, its anterior outline is that of a 

 broadly rounded arch, reaching about to the level of the middle of 

 the posterior molar. In relictus this fossa is at first narrow and para- 

 llel-sided, then becomes V-shaped, with the point at about the level 

 of the anterior end of the last molar. In typical pilorides, the pos- 

 terior border of the nasals reaches or exceeds that of the premaxillaries; 

 whereas, in the two specimens of relicta, the nasals are slightly ex- 





