906 MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN EODBNTIA. 



thumb. Lewis and < ilarke's account of their mode of living in communities, 

 of the character of their burrows, and of their habits, is truthful in all its 

 details, as I can affirm from personal observation. On the other hand, then' 

 is nothing in the account of the external characters of these animals that very 

 strongly recalls Spermophilus townsendi, while the size and the relative length 

 of the tail at once show the impossibility of referring the "Burrowing 

 Squirrel" of Lewis and Clarke 50 the Spermophilus townsendi of Audubon and 

 Bachman. 



In 1855, Professor Bairn* gave to this species the name gunnisoni, based 

 on a single specimen collected by Mr. Kreutzfeldt, in the Cooachitope Pass, 

 Rocky Mountains. In 1*57, in redescribing the species in his Mammals of 

 North America, he very doubtfully referred the Burrowing Squirrel of Lewis 

 and Clarke, together with the systematic names based thereon by Ord and 

 Rafinesque, to his C. gunnisoni, but noted some discrepancies between Lewis 

 and Clarke's description and his specimens, of which he had at this time 

 three, — the original one from Cooachitope Pass and one each from Pole 

 Creek and Medicine Bow Creek. As the two latter differ from the first, he 

 though! it possible that they represented two species, while the Arctomys 

 lewisi of Audubon ami Bachman he deemed might form a third, all different 

 from C. ludovicianus. Later, he thought it quite possible that the Arctomys 

 lewisi might prove to be the same as Lewis and Clarke's animal, explaining 

 how some of the discrepancies between the accounts given by Lewis and 

 Clarke and by Audubon and Bachman might be presumably explained. On 

 the whole, he was inclined to consider " the Arctomys lewisi rather as a 

 ( 'ynomys [than an Arctomys], and quite possibly the same with the Burrowing 

 Squirrel id' Lewis and Clarke, called Arctomys columbianus by Ord, and 

 Anisonyx brachyura by Rafinesque". 



Tlie large number of specimens since received renders unquestionable 

 the reference of all iUrsr. names to the Burrowing Squirrel of Lewis and 

 Clarke, for which the name columbianus of Ord becomes the only tenable 

 specific designation. 



This species, as already stated, was first met with on the Plains of the 

 Columbia by Lewis and Clarke, in 1806". As shown by the subjoined list 

 of specimens, i! has been since met with on the Ogden River and about Fort, 

 Bridger in Northern Utah, and as far eastward as the Medicine Bow and 

 Wind River Mountains. Purl her southward, it ranges throughout the Parks 



