1900.] ON THE GENUS MUSCARDINUS. 85 



this country since the original heads were obtained by Consul 

 Petherick in 1855. The specimen had been shot on the Upper 

 Sobat River, 220 miles above its junction with the Nile, and just 

 above the junction of the Adura and Peebon affluents. Capt. 

 Majendie had never seen examples of it below the junction of these 

 two affluents, but the natives told him there were lots of them up 

 the Baro, as they called the Adura. The White-eared Kob (Cobus 

 leucotis Licbt. & Peters) was obtained on the Sobnt River, and the 

 Red-fronted Gazelle (Gazetta rufifrons Gray) near Fashoda. The 

 occurrence of the latter W. African species in the Soudan was a 

 most noteworthy fact, and had been first brought to our knowledge 

 last year by Mr. F. Burgess, who had been good enough to present 

 to the British Museum a skin and two skulls of it obtained by him 

 during the recent Soudan campaign at Faki-Kowi, on the White 

 Nile, 200 miles south of Khartoum. Mr. Thomas had been quite 

 unable to find any difference between these specimens and the 

 types from West Africa, and it seemed probable that the species 

 ranged all round the southern and western borders of the Great 

 Saharan Desert, being represented on the north by the closely 

 allied G. rufina Thos. The Tiang (Damalisciis tianc/ Heugl.) was 

 obtained on the Sobat River. 



Mr. G. E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, F.Z.S., exhibited some specimens 

 of Dormice (Muscardinus), and made the following remarks : — 



Recent accessions of Dormice to the British Museum Collection 

 demonstrate the occurrence of at least two clearly marked local 

 races or subspecies, in addition to that which I recently described 

 under the name of pxdclier x . Thus the British Dormouse may be 

 at once distinguished by the greater intensity of its coloration, 

 and in other respects, from its representative in neighbouring- 

 Continental areas, such as Calais, Manonville, and Haute-Savoie 

 (France), and Saxony. 



There are also two specimens, Nos. 94.3.1.42 and 241, the latter 

 from my own collection (without dimensions), from Zuberec, North 

 Hungary, taken at an altitude of 2500 metres, which are slightly 

 darker in colour than M. avellanarius typicus. Two others (Nos. 

 94.3.1.43 & 45), from Csalokoz Somorja, in the plains (1000 metres) 

 of AVestern Hungary, are intermediate between the subspecies 

 typicus and speciosus. Their relationship cannot well be made out 

 until we receive further specimens, nor have we, in the absence of 

 specimens from Scandinavia, an exact idea of the appearance of 

 the form with which Linnseus was acquainted. 



It is remarkable that in the British Dormouse we have what, at 

 first sight, may 6eem to be an exception to the general rule that 

 the representatives of a species inhabiting the British Isles 2 are 

 duller than those of the neighbouring Continent. But if British 



1 Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 7, vol. ii. Nov. 1893, p. 423. 



2 British Harvest Mice arc brighter than those of Western Hungary (see 

 Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 7, vol. iii. April 1899, pp. 342 & 343). 



