SOIURID.E— SPERMOPHILUS EMPETRA. • 843 



genus Arctomys. The only point of discrepancy is the " palmae sine vestigio 

 pollicis", which is almost equally valid against the reference of Pallas's Mus 

 empetra to any American species of Arctomys. While it is difficult to satis- 

 factorily make out what Pennant's original Quebec Marmot is, the statement 

 "larger than a Rabbit" shows it was not A. parry i* It was in all proba- 

 bility based on a northern example of Arctomys monax. Sabine, in 1822, 

 while citing Mus empetra of Pallas, and all the reference subsequently, to 

 that time, based on it, as well as Pennant's and Forster's Quebec Marmot, 

 was the first to describe a specimen of the northern form of Arctomys monax 

 under the specific name empetra. Sabine himself, however, noticed the dis- 

 crepancies between Forster's account of his Quebec Marmot and his own 

 Arctomys empetra, and also refers to the want of agreement between Pallas's 

 account of Mus empetra and his own specimen. He says : — " But that speci- 

 men [Forster's] was only eleven inches, and the tail three inches long; it 

 could not therefore have been fully grown. Pallas described the animal from 

 a specimen in theLeyden Museum, and gave it the name Empetra; this did 

 not exceed a foot in length, and its tail was only two inches and a half long. 

 .... The chestnut color of the head is mentioned by Forster, and there- 

 fore is probably to be found in some instances, though on the specimen I 

 have seen there is no such appearance." — {Trans. Linn. Soc. xiii, 1822, pp. 

 585, 586.) Richardson, in 1825, in describing Arctomys parryi, distinctly 

 identifies Forster's Quebec Marmot with his A. parryi.f but makes no refer- 

 ence to the Mus empetra of Pallas, nor to the empetra of Schreber, Ginelin, 

 and other early systematic authors. Excepting Pallas's unfortunate reference 

 to Pennant's almost unrecognizable Quebec Marmot, the whole account of 

 his Mus empetra relates unquestionably to the animal subsequently known 

 as Parry's Marmot, and it hence becomes necessary to adopt the name empetra 

 in place of parryi for that species. 



Parry, in 1825, barely alludes to his meeting with an animal he termed 



* The Quebec Marmot of Pennant's first edition of his Synopsis of Quadrupeds (1771) is uot by any 

 means the Quebec Marmot of the second edition of his Arctic Zoology (17S2). In the latter, the descrip- 

 tion is so far modified as to also cover the Mus empetra of Pallas and the Quebec Marmot of Forster. He 

 says :— " The specimen which I formerly saw at Mr. Brook's, alive, appeared larger than a Rabbit ; but 

 the specimen in the Royal Society's Museum [Forster's specimen] was only eleven inches long from the 

 nose to the tail, and the tail three inches. This probably was a young one." — {Arctic Zoology, vol. i, 

 179:>, p. 128.) 



t" Forster, in the Philosophical Transactions, describes a specimen of the A. parryi procured from 

 Churchill, under the name of the Quebec Marmot, at the same time expressing his doubts of its identity 

 with that animal." — (RICHARDSON, Parry's Second Voy. App. p. 318.) 



