6 SOLENODON PARADOXUS. 
paradoxus were discovered until 1907, when A. Hyatt Verrill secured an adult 
male, an adult female, and a young individual still retaining its milk dentition. 
Of these specimens, Dr. J. A. Allen (:08) has given a brief account. The skulls 
and dentition are well figured by him and critical comparison is made with 
skulls of S. cubanus. The preservation of the skin and soft parts of the speci- 
mens was too poor to admit of further detailed study, however. A brief paper 
by Verrill (:07) recounts the few facts he was able to glean as to the habits of 
these animals in San Domingo. The present account will, it is hoped, serve 
partially to fill the hiatus existing in our knowledge of the general anatomy of 
the species. 
Specimens of the Cuban Solenodon, were made known by Poey in 1834, 
through a communication to a Havana paper, ‘‘El plantel.” Later, in 1851, 
he gave a more detailed notice of the animal, with a colored plate, in his ‘‘Mem- 
orias sobre la historia natural de la isla de Cuba.” Poey obtained specimens 
from the mountainous regions east of Bayamo, Cuba, where the animal was 
said to be well known. This author reviews at some length the early accounts 
of the native Cuban animals, and after an exhaustive search, fails to find any 
evidence that it was known to the early historians of the country. Since he 
was unable to attach to it any of the native names of animals mentioned by 
these writers, he proposed to call it the Almiqui, a name derived from that of 
one of the mountains in the eastern department of Cuba near where his speci- 
mens were taken. He supposed the Cuban animal to be conspecific with that 
of Haiti and San Domingo. Gundlach subsequently obtained examples from 
the Sierra Maestra, but Ramon de la Sagra’s statement that it occurs in the 
region of Trinidad, Cuba, Poey takes pains to show, is based solely on the 
latter’s note in ‘‘El] plantel” concerning vague reports of an animal in that 
region whose identity could not be certainly established. 
According to A. H. Verrill (:07, p. 56), the natives of San Domingo have 
various names for Solenodon paradoxus, as Orso (bear), Hormigero (ant-eater), 
Juron (ferret) “‘also applied to the mongoose,”’ and Milqui. In his list of the 
mammals of Middle America and the West Indies Elliot gives it a vernacular 
name ‘‘ Agouta,”’ whose origin I have been unable to discover. 
