TUPAIIDiE. 107 



TUPAIIDiB.i 



While Sir Thomas Stamford Eaflles was Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marl- 

 borough, as is well known, he engaged the services of MM. Diard and Duvaucel to 

 assist in the collection and preservation of his zoological specimens, and to conduct 

 any anatomical observations which he might wish made on recent subjects : the 

 whole of these observations and collections were to be the property of the East 

 India Company. MM. Diard and Duvaucel, however, according to Raffles, before the 

 expiry of the first year of their engagement, advanced pretensions so inconsistent with 

 the letter of their agreement that he had to discontinue his arrangement with them. 

 Erom what Raffles states, it appears probable that they had claimed the independent 

 right of pubhshing their observations, because he mentions that he had no alternative 

 left but to undertake an immediate description of the collection himself, or allow 

 the resrdts of all his endeavours and exertions to be cai'ried to a foreign country. 

 Whatever may have been his views regarding then' duties before his disagreement 

 with them, we find him presenting the Asiatic Society of Bengal with a figure and 

 descrij)tion of the so-called Sorex-glis drawn up by them. This paper was read before 

 the Society on the 10th March 1820,^ and as Raffles' own description was not laid 

 before the Linnsean Society until the 5th December of that year,^ nor pubhshed untU 

 two years later, the credit belongs to MM. Diard and Duvaucel of having first 

 brought to light this remarkable iusectivorous group. To the contribution to the 

 Asiatic Researches Sir T. Raffles makes no allusion whatever ia his communication to 

 the Linnsean Society. The only explanation of this seeming oversight is to be found 

 in the introductory remarks to his Descrij)tive Catalogue of the Zoology of Sumatra 

 and its neighbourhood. 



MM. Diard and Duvaucel regarded the animal they described as a true shrew 

 disguised in the habits, and, I may add, in the garb, of a squirrel, but that it was 

 possible that it might be taken as the type of a new sub-division, for which, however, 

 they did not propose any name beyond the term Sorex-glis. After mentioning that 

 it was distinguished from the shrews by its teeth and caecum, they stiU spoke of it as 

 " Ce veritable sorex" and appended the specific term glis to indicate its Sciurine 

 habit of body. It is not until we turn to Horsfield's " Java"* that we find the com- 

 pound word Sorex-glis applied to the animal in question. Eor better Latinity and 

 for the sake of euphony, Desmarest^ proposed the term Gli-sorex, wliich GiebeP has 

 recently altered to Glisosorex. Raffles, however, in his description of two species 



' Dr. Gray has pointed out (Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. (1860), Vol. V, p. 7l,) that there is a figure and a descrip- 

 tion of a Tupaia in Ellis's MS. papers and drawings of the animals observed in Captain Cook's third voyage, and 

 which are now deposited in the Zoological Department of the British Museum. 



The Tupaia was apparently first obtained at the Island of Condore (Pulo Condore), which is about one hundred 

 miles to sea from Saigon, and where Cook was on the 20th January 1780. The animal is described and figured in that 

 collection of drawings as Sciurus dissimilis, but it would be impossible from the crude nature of the sketch to hazard 

 any opinion regarding the species. 



2 Asiatic Researches, Vol. XIV, 1822. = Mammologie, p. 536. 



3 Linnrean Transactions, 1821, Vol. XIII, p. 239. ^ Odontographie, p. 18. 

 ■' Horsfd. Eesearch., Java, 1824 



