7 
10 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
European skins yet probably falls within the limits of individual 
variation. Skins from the Harz Mountains of Germany and others 
from Switzerland match it very closely. The feet are a little small 
and the skull, compared with those from Europe having equally 
worn teeth, is a trifle smaller, yet in both these respects it can be 
duplicated in the European series. The braincase seems smaller, 
however, and the angle formed by the sides of the frontoparietal 
suture is more acute. Additional specimens from Palestine may 
show that the local representatives of the species are entitled to rank 
as a separate race. | 
The immature specimen is in the slaty gray pelage, and though 
taken June Ist, is fairly well grown (total length 190 mm.), indicating 
as Barrett-Hamilton has suggested, that it breeds early in the year. 
APODEMUS MYSTACINUS (Danford and Alston). 
Gray Wood Mouse. 
Mus mystacinus Danford and Alston, Proc. Zool. soc. London, 1877, p. 279. 
A series of fourteen skins, young and adult, represents this species, 
which seems to be rare in collections. All are from the region about | 
the base of Mt. Hermon, and correspond in all details with the original 
description. The young, unlike those of the sylvaticus group, are col- — 
ored practically like the adults, though the fawn tints on the sides of 
the face and body brighten slightly with age. The original series in 
the British Museum comprised three specimens, two at least in alcohol, 
collected in the Bulgar Dagh region of southern Asia Minor. The pale — 
coloration is typical of the dry country in which this mouse lives, — 
and Mr. Oldfield Thomas (Ann. mag. nat. hist., 1903, ser. 7, 12, p. 188) - 
has lately described an even paler race, A. m. smyrnensis, from ex- 
treme western Asia Minor at Smyrna. In this race the hairs of the — 
lower surfaces are pure white to the roots instead of having slaty bases. | 
Through Mr. Thomas’s kindness the M. C. Z. has received im €Xx- | 
change a specimen referred to mystacinus taken in the forest belt 
bordering the Black Sea, an area very different faunally from the arid 
country to the south. Dr. Phillips’s fine series representing typical 
mystacinus shows that the Black Sea animal, as might be expected, is 
very different in color. It is much darker, and almost without the 
buffy tints of the former. It may be known as | 
