1052 
SCIENTIFIC RESULTS FROM THE MAMMAL SURVEY. 
No. XXXIII. 
NOTE ON SORICULUS NIGRESCENS AND ITS SUBSPECIES. 
By 
Martin A. C. Hinton. 
{Published by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum.) 
In ■working out the collections made for the Society in Nepal by Lt. -Col. Kennion 
and the Society’s collector, N. A. Baptista, I have had not only to examine 
all the material representing Soriculus nigrescens in the British Museum but to 
enquire into the history of the older specimens. In connection 'with the re'vdsion 
of “ Blanford ” the Zoological Society of London has lent me two of the most 
valuable treasures in its great library, namely, the volumes containing the ori- 
ginal dra-wings and manuscript notes made by Hodgson in Nepal and Sikkim. 
By carefully collating Hodgson’s specimens ■with the dra^wings and notes it 
is possible now, in many cases, to ascertain exact localities and the dates of 
collecting for specimens which hitherto, by reason of insufficient and often inac- 
curate labelling, have been merely so many stumbling 'clocks in the waj* of 
the mammalogist. 
Although Blanford (p. 230) states that Soriculus nigrescens inhabits “ Sikkim 
and Neiial”, my enquiries show that before the work of the Mammal Survey the 
species was, in reality, only kno^wn to occur in S ikki m and Bhutan. All the 
older, or pre -Blanford, material of this species in the British Museum was received 
there, at divers dates, as donations from the East India Company ; some of the 
specimens reached the national collection shortly after their arrival in England, 
while many came in at a far later date when the Company’s London Museum was 
broken up. Gray described (Ann. Mag. N.H. X. p. 261) his “ Cor sir a nigrescens'^ 
in 1842; giving “India” as habitat; but in his list of 1843 p. 79 the type. 
Skin. 42.4.29*65 ) • • j 
( B. M. A, -- • - tlie only specimen then in the Museum, is mentioned 
' t>kull 43-5-31-5 ^ 
as “a. India, Dargelin ? Presented by the E. India Company”. “Dargelin 
is of coui-se a missiielling of Daijiling and as most of the later specimens men- 
tioned below came from this place, and agree ■with the type in every respect, 
Darjiling may be accepted as being in all probability the true type -locality. 
In 1844 a second specimen (44.9.13.7 ), ■with the simple locality “ India ” was 
received ; this probably came from the same source as the type. 
Hodgson, as appears from his MS., first became acquainted %vith the species 
at Dai jiling in January 1848 and in June of that year he sent a pair, marked 
“ No. 7”, home to the India House ; one of the pair, still bearing a label 
“Hodgson Nepal No. 7” in Gray’s writiug, is now before me (B.M. 49.11.23. 
16 ), whUe the other may be 79.11.21.481 a Hodgson specimen labelled “Sikkim” 
but ■without an original number. With the latter, on the break-up of the India 
Museum, seven other Hodgson specimens (79.11.21.313-318, and 482, the latter 
being the t^vpe of Sorex sikimensis, Hodgson) arrived at the British Museum 
and 'were then promptly labelled “Nepal”. But these still bear Hodgson’s 
original labels (in script) and each is marked “ No. 82” ; plate 33 in \ol. I of 
Hodgson’s MS. is headed “ India House November 1852 No. 82” and notes on 
that dra^wing leave no room for doubting that the six specimens in question 
all obtained in Darjiling Garden. Blanford also collected specimens at Darji- 
ling, at a much later date, and some of these are before me. With only one 
definite exception the whole of the material in the collection before the days 
