SPALAX .EGTPTIACUS. 
299 
first to succeed was Mrs. Harry Coghill, who sent a good flowering plant ^ in July 
1893, grown at Coghurst Hall near Hastings. 
[The preceding observations on Spalax are given in nearly the same form in which 
they were left by their lamented author, and were mostly completed in 1893, when 
the animal was described and flgured from life, in London. 
M. Letourneux was readily accepted as the discoverer of the blind rat in North 
Africa, but as no description of any of his specimens was extant, when it became known 
to some of Dr. Anderson’s zoological friends that he had prepared a description, he was 
urged to publish his remarks and give the animal a specific name, in anticipation of the 
issue of his forthcoming volume on the Mammals of Egypt. A local term had been 
suggested, but he observed that a determinative local name oftentimes had proved 
embarrassing, if not misleading; and in this he was afterwards justified, as he leaned 
to the opinion that the North African form would prove to be identical with that from 
Palestine, obtained by Canon Tristram, with whose specimens in the British Museum 
he had become familiar and had carefully compared with his own. It is not improbable 
that if the species had then been given a name, that of the distinguished clerical 
naturalist would have been associated with it. 
However, as the Dervish disturbances in Egypt interfered with the collecting of 
Mammals, the work on that section was laid aside and the volume on the Reptiles was 
completed. Meanwhile the subject of the Spalacidte came to be taken up and treated 
exhaustively by Dr. A. Nehring, in a publication in which he discriminated several new 
species ; and to a stuffed Spalax irom Ramleh, in Lower Egypt, without name of donor, 
but in the possession of the Nat. Plist. Museum, Berlin, since 1878, he gave the 
specific name of cegyptiacus. 
Dr. Nehring’s paper was placed, without any notes, beside Dr. Anderson’s MS. relating 
to Spalax. Likewise, a paper by Professor E. Sordelli 2 , of Milan, “ Sulla esistenza del 
genere Spalax, nell’ Africa settentrionale ” (Seduta 26 Nov., 1899), was enclosed with the 
other materials bearing on the subject. This paper was of much interest, as it extended 
the area of distribution on the N. African coast to the westward of Egypt, into Cyrenaica. 
In 1893, Dr. Anderson wrote to H.B.M.’s Consul at Benghazi, Tripoli, to ask if he 
could allow a Collector to be sent to get all kinds of small mammals in that neighbour¬ 
hood—the rat-mole being specially kept in view; but the reply was discouraging, 
“ the country (the true Cyrenaica) being too unsettled for carrying out such an object.” 
^ Length of flower-spike about 12 inches. Sterna delicate green, giving off the small flower-stalks almost 
alternately, with a tiny stiffish bract, terminating in a yellowish-green margin. The terminal fourth of the 
stem is covered with imperfect flowers of a delicate violet tint, which are asexual and do not open and are 
very small, and become smaller and rather crowded at the apex, being spirally arranged. 
This grape-hyacinth probably extends all over North Africa. It is common in Southern Europe. 
2 Atti Soc. Ital. Mus. Civ. Milano, 1899, p. 357. 
2 Q 2 
