150 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 

 The Occurrence of Mus sylvaticus wintoni, Barr.-Ham., at Tostock, 

 Suffolk. — It has long been known that examples of a species of the 

 genus Mus differing little except in size from the common Long-tailed 

 Field-Mouse {Mus sylvaticus) have from time to time been met with, 

 and till recently they have generally been regarded as individuals of a 

 large race of this species. So recently as December, 1894, Mr. W. E. 

 de Winton, in the pages of this Journal (Zool. 1894, pp. 441-5), 

 gave a minute description of this variety, which he considered as 

 identical with M. flavicollis of Melchior;" but the then editor of ' The 

 Zoologist,' in a footnote to the article, expressed an opinion that the 

 skins shown to him by Mr. de Winton, as well as those described by 

 Melchior, were " nothing but a large variety of M. sylvaticus" but that 

 Mr. de Winton did well to bring the subject once more under the notice 

 of naturalists. And so the matter remained till March, 1900, when 

 Mr. Barrett-Hamilton contributed a valuable paper to the ' Proceed- 

 ings of the Zoological Society of London,' " On Geographical and 

 Individual Variation in Mus sylvaticus and its Allies,"! in which, after 

 a most exhaustive examination of a large series of Long-tailed Field- 

 Mice from many localities, " almost conterminous with the limits of 

 the Palasarctic Region," he arrived at the conclusion, and I think 

 justly, that this large variety differs so essentially from M. sylvaticus 

 typicus as to be worthy of the rank of a subspecies, and he conferred 

 upon it the name of Mus sylvaticus wintoni, in recognition of Mr. de 

 Winton, who first pointed out its subspecific value. In Mr. Barrett- 

 Hamilton's survey of the large series of this widely distributed species, 

 numbering 580 examples, he recognizes no fewer than nineteen sub- 

 species or phases, all of which can be identified as modifications of the 

 original type as known to Linnaeus. I am indebted to the kindness of 

 Mr. G. T. Rope for the opportunity of examining one of these inter- 

 esting animals, which was sent to him by the Rev. J. G. Tuck, of 

 Tostock Rectory, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, where it was killed 



* ' Den danske Stats og Norges Pattedyr,' p. 99, pi. 1 (1834). 

 | P. Z. S. (1900), pp. 387-428, pi. xxv. 



