Three small collections of mammals from Hispaniola : (with two plates)

Abstract

The United States National Museum has received from Haiti and the Dominican Republic three small collections of mammals that ha ve not yet been reported on. Of these, the first was made in a sheltered side crevice, probably once the nesting place of the giant Haitian barn owl, near the bottom of a deep sink hole called the Trujin, on the massif of La Selle, Haiti. ITow' he explored this cavity by means of a tall pine, felled and lowered into the hole to serve as a ladder, has been told by Dr. Alexander Wetmore in “Explorations and Field-Work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1927,” p. 36. The bones from this source are particularly interesting because they represent an almost “puré culture” of the native mammal fauna, nearly uncontaminated by introduced European rodents. Among the Trujin remains is the most nearly complete skull of Brotomys yet collected, and a series of Nesophontes skulls that indicates the presence of well-defined sexual characters independent of size.