1863. | A memoir on the Rats and Mice of India. 327 
on the Tsagyen hills, north of Ava, famous for their marble quarries, 
and on various hills in Pegu as far south as Henzada. In some 
places hundreds of specimens may be found adhering, in dry weather, 
to the surface of limestone rock, upon which alone it appears to 
occur, in the same manner as species of Pupa and Clawsilia are fre- 
quently found in Europe, though rarely in India. 
The animal of H. tubiferum is very small and black, of the usual 
Helicidous form, with 4 tentacles, and so far as I could observe, 
presented no peculiarity. 
ea 
A memoir on the Rats and Mice of India.—By Kpwarp Buy tH. 
The following must be regarded as merely a somewhat rude at- 
tempt to reduce the present utter chaos of Indian Muride to some 
kind of approximation to systematic order; at all events, to present 
a Conspectus of the long series of names and descriptions, that should 
facilitate the future study of these small animals, and conduce even- 
tually, no doubt, to an extensive reduction of the number of named 
species, and to the rectification of their perplexed synonyms. At all 
events, I have brought together every notice which I could find, de- 
scriptive of the Murine animals of India and the countries adjacent. 
Genus GERBILLUS, F. Cuvier. 
The Gerbilles are a group of burrowing field-rats, common (as a ge_ 
nus) to Asia and Africa, of gracile form, with small fore-limbs and 
inversely developed hind-limbs, a longish furred tail, the hairs of 
which are gradually lengthened towards the extremity into a kind of 
tuft, and with distinctly grooved upper rodential tusks. There ap- 
pears to be one Indian species only. 
G. mnpicus; Dipus indicus, Hardwicke, Tr. Lin. Soc. VIII. 279, 
pl. 7; F. Cuv., Mamm. Lithog., I, t. 73 (not good) ; Hardwicke, Z7/. 
Ind. Zool.— G. Cuviert, Waterhouse, P. Z. S. 1838, p, 56 ;— G@. Hard- 
wickei, Gray, Br. Mus. Catal., Mamm., p. 182 ;—Meriones apicalis (?), 
Kuhl, apud Gray ; Mus yencus, B. Ham., I. 8. ; ‘ Desert Rat’ of El- 
phinstone’s ‘ Cabul’ (vzde Introduction).* For description of habits, 
vide W. Elliot, Esq., in Madr. Journ. Lit. Se. X, 211. 
* The ‘Desert Rat’ of Arthur Conolly, ‘Overland Journey to India,’ I. 54, 
refers to the Jerboa (ALAcTAGA INDICA, erroneously so called, of Gray). 
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