Dr. C. I. Forsyth Major — Rodents of W. Mediterranean. 463 



Pumpelly/ Locard,^ and Lortet^ sought to establisli a connection 

 between a supposed Oorsioan 'ice-age,' as attested by the trace of 

 ancient glaciers, and the former existence in the island of a supposed 

 inhabitant of cold regions, the Lagomys corsicanus. Hensel had, 

 however, shown before, in 1856, that the affinities of Lagomys sardus 

 from the Sardinian bone breccia are not with the recent Lagomys 

 (Ogotona), but with a Miocene type, for which he proposed the 

 generic name Myolagiis^ (antedated by Frolagus, Pomel). He was 

 in consequence inclined to assume a Tertiary age for the breccias 

 in which the Frolagus occurred (and, indeed, for the whole of the 

 Mediterranean bone breccias). A similar view has again been 

 brought forward of late years.^ 



I myself pointed out (1) that the Corsican Lagomys likewise 

 belonged to the genus Frolagus, as indeed had already been suspected 

 by Hensel^ from his inspection of Cuvier's figures; (2) that the 

 Tertiary age of the Corsican and Sardinian breccias could not be 

 upheld, above all, because the mollusca occurring in them, as Locard 

 had shown to be the case in the ossiferous breccia of Toga, near 

 Bastia, are still living in the neighbourhood.'' 



Not the least interesting feature in the history of insular Frolagus 

 is its contemporaneity in Corsica with Neolithic man, of whose food 

 it formed a part.^ The same observation has been made inde- 

 pendently of late years by Monsieur le Capitaine Ferton, who 

 ■explored some Neolithic stations in the South of Corsica.^ 



The fact that the fauna of the insular breccias proves to be 

 totally different from the contemporary fauna of the surrounding 

 continents^" — and, so far as the mammalia are concerned, different 

 also from the present fauna of these islands — was the starting-point 

 for my subsequent work on the island life of the Western Medi- 

 terranean region. ^^ To state briefly one of the principal points : I was 

 led to consider the Sardinian and Corsican Pleistocene faunas as 

 relics of the Tertiary period. 



1 R. Pumpelly, " Sur quelques traces de glaciers dans I'ile da Corse " : Bull. Soc. 

 geol, France (2), vol. xvii, p. 81 (1860). 



2 A. Locard, "Note sur les Breches osseuses des env. de Bastia (Corse) " : Arch. 

 Mus. Hist. Nat. Lyon, vol. i, pp. 48, 49 (1872). 



3 Lortet, "Etude sur le Lagomys corsicanus (Cuvier) de Bastia (Corse)": 

 ibid., p. 56. 



* Zeitschr. deutsch. geol. Ges., vol. viii, pp. 689-703 (1856). 



5 Centralbl. f. Min. Geol. und Pal. No. 18, p. 562 (1902). 



« Op. cit., p. 696. 



'' Forsyth Major, " Breccie ossifere e stazione neolitica in Corsica " : Eend. R. 

 1st. Lomb. Scienze e Lettere (2), vol. xiii, pp. 432-435 (1880). 



8 Forsyth Major, " Scoperte Paletnologiche in Corsica" : Archivio per I'Antropo- 

 logia e I'Etnologia, vol. x (1880). 



^ Ch. Ferton, " Sur I'Histoire de Bonifacio a I'epoque neoHthique" : Actes Soc. 

 Linn. Bordeaux, vol. liii, pp. 129-147, 347-366 (1898). 



i» Forsyth Major, in Atti Soc. Tosc. Sc. Nat. ; Proc. Verb., 9th March, 1879, 

 p. Ixxii; id., in Kosmos, vol. vii, p. 6 (1883). 



11 Forsyth Major, " L'Origine della Fauna delle nostre isole": Atti Soc. Tosc. 

 Se. Nat.; Proc. Verb., vol. iii, pp. 36-42, 113-133, 192 (1881-83). Id., "Die 

 Tyrrhenis. Studien iiber geogr. Verbreitung von Thieren und Pflanzen im westl. 

 Mittelmeergebiet " : Kosmos, vol. vii, pp. 1-17, 81-106 (1883). Id., " Ancora la 

 Tyrrhenis": Atti Soc. Tosc. Sc. Nat. ; Proc. Verb., pp. 13-21 (1883). 



