214 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



reference really applies to the native Jamaican rice-field mouse. 

 Undoubtedly, the introduction of the Old World rats and mice must 

 have contributed in great measure to reduce the numbers of any 

 indigenous species in these islands, and the addition of the mongoose 

 would seem to leave little hope of their escape from utter annihilation. 

 According to Thomas, the Jamaican Oryzomys is closely related to 

 Oryzomys couesi of Central America, whose range extends northward 

 to Honduras, Guatemala, and Chiapas in southern Mexico. 



Oryzomys victus Thomas. 



Oryzomys victus Thomas, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 1898, ser. 7, 1, 

 p. 178. 



St. Vincent is the only island of the Lesser Antilles from which this 

 genus is now known. The single specimen on which the species is 

 based was collected for the British Museum about 1892, by H. H. 

 Smith, who marked it " forest rat." Its relationship is evidently with 

 South x\merican rather than Central American species, and it is 

 compared with the continental 0. longicaudatus. It is probably 

 approaching extinction, if it is not already extinct. A thorough 

 search on the other Lesser Antilles might reveal the presence of the 

 genus; but Chapman, in several days' trapping in Dominica, failed 

 to find it, nor did we get it in the Grenada forests. The introduced 

 rats, which are everywhere common on the islands, would hardly 

 fail to drive it out, wherever the two come into competition. 



Megalomys desmarestii (Fischer). 



Mus desmarestii Fischer, Synopsis Mammalium, 1829, p. 316. 



The so called "Muskrat of the Antilles" probably once occurred 

 throughout all or most of the Windward Islands. De Rochefort, in 

 1658, includes it as one of the five native mammals of Tobago. On 

 Santa Lucia it was also found, and on Martinique. Du Tertre, how- 

 ever, writing in 1654, mentions it from Martinique only, of the French 

 islands. Here they were commonly eaten by the people, who, after 

 singeing the hair, exposed them to the air over night, and then boiled 

 them, throwing off the first water in order to get rid of the strong 

 musky odor. In the Paris Museum are said to be six specimens of 

 this genus, including the type of the present species, collected by D. 



