364 Dr. C. I. Forsyth Major — Some Rodents from Oeningen. 



and that tlie species may be identical with one of the Sciurus species 

 from Sansan.^ 



Several years afterwards, ' Sciurus Bredai ' is by the same author, 

 without justification, given as a synonym of Sciurus Gervaisianus, 

 Lart., from Sansan, and of Sciurus spermophilinus, Dep., from La 

 Grive-Saint-Alban (Isere).^ 



To this identification Deperet rightly observes^ that there is no 

 sufficient reason for the assumption of specific identity between 

 Sc. Bredai and Sc. spermophilinus ; in fact, dimensions alone are 

 a very unsafe criterion to rely upon for specific distinction or 

 identification. The same must be said of Sc. Gervaisianus, Lart., 

 from Sansan, which might come into consideration as a synonym 

 of Sc. Bredai, since both Lartet and Gervais state it to be smaller 

 than Sc. vulgaris, wherein it agrees with the Oeningen squirrel. 

 But no other characters are given of the Sansan fossil, and Filhol, 

 in his monograph of Sansan,* says that he is unacquainted with the 

 specimens mentioned by his predecessors. 



In the " Catalogue of the Fossil Mammalia in the British Museum 

 (Natural History),"^ Lydekker refers to the specimen No. 42,826, 

 from Oeningen, in the following words : — 



"Sciurus, sp. (cf iS. bredai, H. v. Meyer). 



42,826. The much crushed skeleton of a rodent, probably be- 

 longing to the present genus, from the Qpper Miocene of Oeningen, 

 Switzerland. It is not improbable that this specimen, which indi- 

 cates an animal rather smaller than S. vulgaris, may belong to 

 Meyer's ill-defined S. bredai, which Schlosser suggests may be 

 identical with one of the Sansan species. Van Breda Collection. 

 Purchased 1871." 



Both Schlosser, in 1884, and Deperet, in 1892, state that the type 

 of Sciurus Bredai is at Haarlem ; there can be no doubt, therefore, 

 that it is the No. 42,826, which has been incognito in the British 

 Museum (Natural History) since 1871, when the A'an Breda 

 Collection was purchased " from the executors of Dr. de Haan, of 

 Haarlem." ^ My reasons for this assumption are very obvious, for : 



(1) No. 42,826 is the only specimen of Sciurus from Oeningen 

 in the van Breda Collection. 



(2) The bones mentioned and measured by Schlosser, after 

 H. V. Meyer's sketch of the type, are present in the British Museum 

 specimen, and in such a condition that the measurements published 

 by Schlosser could be taken from them. The slight divergences 

 between the latter author's measurements and my own are sufficiently 

 explained by the fact that the former were not taken from the 

 original but from a rough sketch, and that my accurate measurements 



1 Palaeontographica, xxxi, p. 88 (1884). 



2 Beitr. Pal. Oestr.-Ung., viii, pp. 470, 471 (1890). 



3 Arch. Mus. Lyon, v, p. 50 (1892). 



* H. Filhol, "Etudes sur les Mammiferes fossiles de Sansan" : Ann. Sci. Geol., 

 xxi, 20, No. 1, pp. 38, 39 (1891). 

 5 Parti, p. 211 (1885). 

 " Cat. Foss. Mamm., i, p. xii. 



