176 Merr lain Occurrence of Cooper's Lemming 



lished in 1869 (First Annual Report. Geol. Surv. Indiana, 1869, 

 203-208). 



The first published record after Baird's original description 

 seems to have appeared in 1874 in Cones' ' Synopsis of the Muriel ie 

 of North America' (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., 1874, 192-194). 

 In this paper Cones mentioned specimens from Indiana, Illinois, 

 Minnesota, Kansas, Oregon, and Alaska, but it is probable, if not 

 absolutely certain, that those from Oregon and Alaska do not 

 pertain to the species under consideration. 



The only locality in which Synaptomys has been found in any- 

 thing like abundance is the neighborhood of Brookville, Indiana, 

 where Mr. Edgar R. Quick and Amos W. Butler have obtained 

 a number of specimens. This, moreover, is the easternmost 

 locality from which any positive record has been published. (See 

 Am. Nat,, vol. xix, Feb., 1885, pp. 113-118.) 



In April, 1888, Dr. A. K. Fisher, while hunting at Munson 

 Hill. Virginia (only about five miles from the city of Washing- 

 ton), found a number of ' pellets ' of the Long-eared owl (Asio 

 loilsonianus) under a tree in which one of these owls habitually 

 roosted. In examining these 'pellets,' which were made up 

 almost wholly of the remains of small mammals, I was surprised 

 not only at the large number of individuals and species repre- 

 sented, but also at the discovery among the rest of three more or 

 less perfect skulls of Synqptomi/s cooper L The total number of 

 skulls found in these pellets was 176, of which 137 were of mice, 

 26 of shrews, and 13 of birds. The mice and shrews were posi- 

 tively identified as follows : 



Arvicola riparius 95 



Arvicola pinetorum 24 



Mus musculus 15 



Synaptomys cooperi 3 



Blarina exilipes 23 



Blarina brevicauda. . 3 



Total 163 



A year and a half afterward a single skull was taken from the 

 stomach of a Barred owl (Syrnium nrbiiloxiini) killed at Alfred 

 Center, New York, October 11, 1889, and still later another was 

 found in the stomach of a Red-tailed hawk (Buteo borcalis) killed 

 at Sandy Spring, Maryland, March 24, 1899. These specimens 

 were exhibited at one of the meetings of the Biological Society, 



