90 W. T. Blanford— On the Voles (Arvicola) of tie [No. 2, 



tract. Another form was procured by Dr. Stoliczka on his last journey, 

 when attached to Sir D. Forsyth's mission to Eastern Turkestan. This 

 Vole was described by myself, in 1875, as A. stoliczkanus. In 1878 I re- 

 ceived from my friend Mr. A. B. Wynne, of the Geological Survey of 

 India, a skin and skull of an Arvicola obtained by him at Mari or Murree, 

 in the hills north of the Punjab. On comparing this specimen with the 

 description of Arvicola roylei, I found considerable similarity but .there 

 appeared to be a difference in the characters of the posterior upper molar 

 teeth. This distinction alone, however, I thought insufficient without 

 further comparison ; and I therefore waited until I returned to England 

 last year, when I compared the Murree animal (of which, in the meantime, 

 Mr. Wynne had procured for me additional specimens) with the type of 

 A. roylei, and ascertained that the two were distinct. At the same time 

 Mr. Thomas found an example of another species from Kumaon in the 

 specimens of the East-India Company's Museum, which had just been 

 made over to the British Museum ; and Dr. Scully brought several skins 

 and spirit-specimens of yet another form from Gilgit. All these forms 

 appeared to be undescribed. One more skin in the East- India Company's 

 collection, procured by Griffith in Afghanistan, and hitherto supposed to 

 be an imperfect specimen of Mies meitada, proved, on the skull being 

 extracted, to be an Arvicola. There does not seem to be any definite 

 character by which, judging from dried skins, this form can be distinguish- 

 ed from the Mongolian A. mandarinus ; and although it is by no means 

 improbable that fresh specimens may show the existence of specific dis- 

 tinction, it does not appear advisable to propose a new name for the 

 Afghan specimen on the evidence of a single dried skin. 



All of these Voles are fairly distinguishable by their dentition, and all 

 when placed together, can be recognized by slight differences of coloration, 

 and frequently by the relative proportions of the ears, feet, toes, or tail ; 

 but in descriptions it is very difficult to explain small distinctions of colour 

 due to different shades of brown more or less mixed with grey, black, red, 

 or yellow. 



As is well known, the genus Arvicola is distributed throughout nearly 

 the whole of the Palaearctic and Nearctic Regions, and comprises many 

 species. The classification of these forms has proved a by no means easy 

 problem, and various plans have been proposed ; the best known and sim- 

 plest of these appears to be that of Blasius*, some form of which has been 

 adopted by most modern writers. This system depends chiefly on the 



* Miinchen, Bull. Akad. 1853, col. 257 ; Munch. Gel. Anz. xxxvii. 1853, col. 105. 

 Saugthiere Deutschlands, pp. 333—336 &c. The first sketch of the scheme was in 

 Keyserling and Blasius ' Wirbelthiere Europa's (1840), p. 40. 



