644 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History [Vol. LXVI 



To the long list of names for this latter animal already carried in the 

 literature, it was deemed advisable to add another, though it is realized 

 that our knowledge of the speciation of Orycteropus is totally inadequate. 

 Unfortunately the meager material in the museums of this country does 

 not place me in a position to judge as to the validity of the many forms 

 described, often insufficiently or on the basis of a single specimen. 



All of the " species" and "genera" of African pangolins named by 

 the early workers, which are, in my present opinion, without foundation, 

 have been placed in synonymy by reviewers of the Order, and for this 

 reason I have not burdened this paper with a detailed synonymy. My 

 one departure from currently accepted ranking of names of the scaly 

 anteaters is the relegation of the names Phataginus, Smutsia, and Uro- 

 manis, recognized by Pocock and others as full genera, into subgeneric 

 position. I do this with no depreciation of the established fact that the 

 groups in question are very distinct, nor without appreciation of the 

 importance of the characters upon which the distinction is based. It 

 does seem, however, that nomenclature gains nothing and loses much 

 by the multiplicity of generic names where each genus of a single family 

 is represented by a single, or at the most, only two species. I consider it 

 advisable to recognize these differences by name, but not so to elevate 

 the rank involved that the fundamental relationship of all forms is 

 obscured by designations that can be of meaning to no one but the 

 specialist. 



In the Congo Expedition report on ants there was published a sec- 

 tion by Dr. J. Bequaert on 'The Predaceous Enemies of Ants,' to which 

 Mr. Lang contributed a full and interesting section on mammals. This 

 was in part founded on his field notes, but these were not completely 

 given and not always recognizable as original. For this reason it seemed 

 appropriate to reproduce them here, without additions, for their value as 

 original information. In certain instances, as indicated by quotation 

 marks, these notes are directly transcribed. Some notes, however, 

 have been rewritten in order to place the subject matter in a more 

 convenient form. 



The excellent photographs of living and recently living animals 

 (Plates XXXII to XXXIX) are products of Mr. Lang's painstaking 

 photography. His labors resulted in many pictures of these species, of 

 which those reproduced are but a small selection. Text figures 1 and 2 

 are from the pen of Miss Margaret M. Matthew. 



It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generosity of Dr. Glover M. 

 Allen of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Dr. Gerrit S. Miller, 



