118 W. T. Blanford— On Myospalax fuscicapillus, Blytk [No. 2, 



X. — On Myospalax fuscicapillus, Blyth. — By W. T. Blanford, F. R. S., &c. 



[Received May 8th ;— Read June 1st, 1881.] 



(With Plate II, in part.) 



Forty years ago, some specimens of a rodent in the Society's collection 

 were named by Mr. Blyth Georyclnis fuscocapillus. It was not known at 

 the time whence they were procured, but Mr. Blyth supposed that they 

 came from the Himalayas. The first mention of the name was in 1841,* 

 in a list of specimens of skulls, and in the following year, a very brief and 

 imperfect description cf the animal was given. 



No fuller account of the species was ever published. The true locality, 

 Quetta, appears to have been ascertained by the late Captain Hutton, the 

 animal was noticed and a short description of its habits given in his " Rough 

 notes on the Zoology of Candahar" (J. A. S. B., XV, p. 141.) It was in 

 this paper that the new generic name Myospalax appears to have been 

 proposed for the first time : in a footnote, Mr, Blyth states that " this 

 type differs from Myodes or the Lemming genus in the much greater size 

 and strength of the feet, in the elongation and protrusion of its upper 

 incisive tusks, &c, and he adds that he will describe the form more parti- 

 cularly, together with some other new rodents. That such was his inten- 

 tion is apparent also from a letter to the Honorary Secretary published in 

 the preceding volume of the Society's Journal, f in which Mr. Blyth re- 

 quests that a figure of the animal and its skull might be prepared for 

 publication. The request was granted, but apparently the plate was never 

 drawn, it was certainly, so far as I am aware, never published. In Mr. 

 Blyth's Catalogue of the Mammalia, the specimens in the Society's collec- 

 tion are recorded with references to all the accounts above noticed. J So 

 far as I am aware the animal has never been mentioned in European works, § 

 probably because the first brief notice escaped record in Wiegmann's 

 Archiv. 



Recently, when occupied in determining the Arvicolce of the Hima- 

 layas, my attention was called to a specimen, brought by Mr. Griffith from 

 Afghanistan, that had long been in the old East India Company's Museum 



* For references see synonymy. 



t J. A. S. B., XIV, Proc. Oct. 1845, p. ciii. 



X There is also a brief allusion to this species by Mr. Blyth in 1863, J. A. S. B., 

 XXXII, p. 89. 



§ The same name Myospalax was subsequently used by Brandt, (Mem. Acad. St. 

 Petersburg 1855, IX, and by Carus and Gerstaecker, (Handbuch der Zoologie, 1875, 

 p. 108,) for the genus Siphneus, the type of which was named Mus myospalax by 

 Laxmann in 1773. See A. Milne-Edwards, Eech. Mamm. pp. 71, &c. 



