118 
JOUKNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
WANTED — DATA ON THE BED SQUIRREL 
I am getting together material for a monograph on the red squirrel and I 
should be grateful for any data on this species. Any accurate information, no 
matter how fragmentary, will be welcome. I should be particularly glad of notes 
on family life. First-hand accounts, with all details, of destruction of birds or 
eggs by this species are desirable, and equally desirable are data on cases where 
red squirrels have not molested nests when the opportunity offered. Keferences 
to literature which the reader believes to be relatively inaccessible will be appre- 
ciated, verbatim quotations, with exact citation of publication, preferred. It is 
perhaps hardly necessary to state that full credit will be given for all information 
used. — A. Brooker Klugh, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. 
THE CORRECT NAME OF THE WEST AFRICAN PYGMY SQUIRREL 
Du Ohaillu was the discoverer of the West African pygmy squirrel and has 
also been credited with its original description as Sciurus minutus (Proc. Boston 
Soc. Nat. Hist., VII, 1860, p. 366). Later Major (Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1893, 
pp. 181, 187, 189 and 215) included it among his Nannosciurinse, but without 
separating it generically from the East Indian or South American representatives 
of that subfamily. It remained thus Nannosciurus minutus (Du Chaillu) until 
Thomas (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., (8) III, 1909, pp. 469, 474 and 475) created a new 
genus Myosciurus for the West African form, with Sciurus minutus Du Chaillu 
as type by monotypy. Hollister (Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, XXXIV, 1921, 
p. 135) changed this name to Myosciurus minutulus on the ground that Du 
Chaillu’s name was preoccupied by Sciurus minutus Lartet, a fossil species. 
Accepting Hollister’s revision as correct, I later happened to compare Leconte’s 
descriptions of mammals from the Du Chaillu collection. I came to the con- 
clusion that Leconte’s Sciurus pumilio fitted the West African pygmy squirrel and 
could in no way be identical with, as Trouessart supposed, his S. subviridescens 
(= jEthosciurus poensis). Hollister, to whom I communicated my findings, 
asked me then to prepare this note for publication. 
Witmer Stone of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia kindly 
informed me that though they have a number of mammals collected by Du 
Chaillu, there is no specimen positively identifiable as Leconte’s Sciurus pumilio. 
Glover M. Allen, who is sure that the type of Sciurus Du Chaillu is not in 
the Cambridge Museum, supposes that Du Chaillu went first to Philadelphia 
and left his specimens with Leconte, who then was the first to describe Sciurus 
pumilio (Proc. Ac. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, IX, 1857, p. 11). Three years later, 
as stated above, Du Chaillu’s own description appeared without any mention of 
Leconte’s previous work. 
Trouessart seems to be responsible for the confusion. In his first catalogue and 
in subsequent references he places pumilio in the subgenus Heliosciurus: Sciurus 
(Heliosciurus) pumilio (Bull. Soc. Et. Sci. Angers, X, 1, 1880, p. 84; Le Natural- 
iste, I, no. 37, 1880, p. 292; op. cit., no. 40, 1880, p. 315; Bull. U. S. Geol. Geogr. 
Surv. Terr., IV, no. 2, 1881, p. 306). He finally disposes of pumilio in his second 
catalogue (Cat. Mamm. Viv. Foss., 1897, p. 406) as a synonym of Xerus {Parax^ 
erus) poensis, connecting “pumilio et subviridescens.” From then on pumilio 
disappears from the literature. 
