336 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
afternoon foraging on the ground for food, but we found them about 
during the hottest hours of the day, running from clump to clump of 
scattered bushes or herbs, often stopping motionless to look about, 
and frequently making considerable journeys across open ground. 
Their holes were almost always found to have several openings close 
together, whether separate burrows or a common burrow was not 
ascertained. It was noticeable that the Squirrels were confined al- 
most wholly to sandy soil, and were practically absent from the hard 
and sun-cracked “cotton soil.” No doubt the latter is of too sticky 
a consistency in the wet season and so unsuitable for burrowing. 
Relatively fewer were seen on the Dinder than on the Blue Nile. In 
contrast to the ground squirrels of the genus Xerus seen in British 
East Africa, this species when running away in alarm or otherwise 
does not erect its tail at right angles to the body, but trails it inertly 
‘behind. 
PARAXERUS sp. 
Bush Squirrel. 
This is an extremely rare Squirrel in the Blue Nile valley and seems 
to occur sparingly near the eastern portion along the Abyssinian border. 
We met with it but twice and unfortunately failed to secure specimens. 
A pair was seen in a leafy thorn tree a few miles from Fazogli and on 
Gebel Fazogli a single one feeding among the branches of a white- 
barked fig tree with thick green leaves, whose small berry-like fruits 
are eagerly eaten by many species of birds and by the fruit bats. 
FELIS LEO ROOSEVELTI Heller. 
Abyssinian Lion. 
Felis leo roosevelti Heller, Smithsonian misc. coll., 1913, 61, no, 19, p. 2. 
Lions are now rare on the Blue Nile. Indeed, the only place where 
we learned of them was at Omdurman, a small native village above 
Karkoj, where Dr. Phillips heard one. It was at this same place that 
I. C. Johnson in 1901, killed a lion; farther up at Soleil, he shot two 
others, and found more on the southerly bank of the river opposite 
Bados. Probably they have somewhat decreased in the twelve years 
intervening for we did not learn of their presence except at Omdurman. 
Possibly, also, there are more in this region during the rainy season. 
