Remarks.—Desmarest in 1818 gave a remarkably good description of this animal which he named as a new species, Mustela africana, but mistakenly indicated that the single specimen known to him came originally from Africa. Until 1913 the name was applied, wrongly, to weasels of northern Africa or to those of the Azores Islands and St. Thomas Island. In that year Cabrera (1913:429) identified the species with the one later named Putorius (Mustela) brasiliensis paraensis by Goeldi (1897:556, pl. 21) from Pará, Brazil. Despite Cabrera's clear identification in 1913, and his later mention of the correct application of the name Mustela africana, it was not correctly employed by other authors, including myself who even as late as 1936 (p. 111) instead used Goeldi's name. In 1937 Mr. Cabrera called my attention to his published account of Mustela africana and so permitted me to examine the type specimen in the Paris Museum, whither I was bound when I received Mr. Cabrera's letter. My own examination of the specimen fully confirmed the conclusions published by Cabrera (1913:429).
As a matter of historical interest, however, it is worth noting that Cabrera (1913) originally supposed the type specimen to have been taken as booty of war from Portugal by the French and that Cabrera later, at the request of P. Trouessart, pointed out (1914:176) that the specimen had been acquired in exchange ("a cambio") since according to Dr. Trouessart the Museum register showed that offer had been made to Portugal to return this and other specimens but that Portugal had replied that it had nothing to reclaim. Dr. P. Rode in August, 1937, at the Paris Museum, gave it to me as his opinion that the specimen had been an outright gift from the "Cabinet de Lisbonne" to E. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire on his trip to Portugal in 1808 when he was given also from the same cabinet several primates, all from Brazil. Of the labels attached to the pedestal on which the specimen is mounted, that of most ancient appearance is glued to the bottom of the stand and bears in a hand apparently written before Trouessart's entries on the same label, the information "Du Cabinet de Lisbonne 1808" and "J. H. S. 1809."
The opened mouth of the mounted specimen permits one to determine that P2 is absent on each side above. The stuffed scrotal pouch and hair projecting downward about the preputial opening clearly show the animal to have been a male. The least faded portions of the mounted specimen, its sides, are of the same reddish color as characterizes adults from Pará and not of the darker chocolate color of specimens of M. stolzmanni from Perú. The specimen is indistinguishable from topotypes of P. paraensis of Goeldi and his name will have to fall as a synonym of Mustela africana Desmarest.
Goeldi gave an extended description, with figures of the skull, head, and entire animal, when he named paraensis. As his account shows, he was unaware that Taczanowski had described a similar weasel from the headwaters of the Amazon, or for that matter that any weasel excepting Mustela affinis Gray, had been found in South America. Goeldi's later account of additional specimens (1904:61, pls. 1, 2) gives much useful information about the animal. Photographs of several specimens and photographs and detailed measurements of several skulls are presented by him.
Pará, and Cametá, Brazil, places from which Mustela africana africana is known, are nearly 2000 miles from the localities in eastern Perú and eastern Ecuador from which M. a. stolzmanni is known, and no specimens, from intermediate localities, are available to show actual intergradation of the two. However, the similarity in structure of the two weasels is so great as to indicate close affinity. Furthermore, it is understood that environmental conditions at and between the two localities are similar. These considerations, in the light of our knowledge of actual intergradation of geographic races of weasels in other places, cause me to treat, with a feeling of assurance, M. africana [= P. paraensis Goeldi] and M. stolzmanni Taczanowski as subspecies of a single species. M. Rodolpho Legueira Rodríguez writes me, under date of June 16, 1928, that the type specimen of Putorius (Mustela) brasiliensis paraensis Goeldi is stuffed and preserved in a "vitrine" at the Museum Goeldi (Museum Paraense) De Historia Natural e Ethnographia, Pará, Brazil.
The one young specimen seen, that from Cametá, is darker colored than any of the four older specimens examined. It is almost exactly the Chestnut Brown of Ridgway (1912) and therefore approaches closely in color the adult specimens of M. a. stolzmanni. This same tendency to greater richness of color in young than in adults is seen also in Mustela frenata.
Specimens examined.—Total number, 5, all from eastern Brazil, as follows: Pará, 2 (1[2], 1[7]); Pará Murutucu, 1[7]; Río Tocantins, Cametá, 1[75]; type specimen, 1[84].