110 Merriam Two New Wood Eats from the 



Neotoma arizoiiee sp. nov. 



Type from KEAMS CANON, APACHE COUNTY, ARIZONA. No. 4 Ho $ ad. 

 Merriam collection. Collected by J. Sullivan May 21, 1888. 



General Characters. Tail busby as in Neotoma cinerea, but nar- 

 rower ; animal similar to N. cinerea in general appearance, but 

 smaller, and agreeing with the round-tailed species in important 

 cranial characters. Ears large, measuring about 34 mm. from 

 anterior base ; whiskers long and coarse, reaching shoulders. 

 Total length about 365 mm. ; hind foot about 35 mm. (in an 

 old male from the same locality the hind foot measures 39 mm.). 

 Except for its superficial resemblance to N. cinerea, this animal 

 needs no comparison with any known species. 



Color. Upper parts everywhere bright ochraceous-buff, mod- 

 erately mixed with black-tipped hairs ; under parts and feet 

 pure white. Tail bicolor: grayish brown above, white below. 



Cranial and Denial Characters. Skull smaller and much shorter 

 than that of N. cinerea, with shorter nasals and nasal branches 

 of premaxillaries, and larger and much more inflated audital 

 bullac. The most important cranial character, however, con- 

 trasted with N. cinerea, is the presence of a broad slit-like open- 

 ing on each side of the presphenoid and anterior third of the 

 basisphenoid, as in the round-tailed species generally. In the 

 bushy-tailed N. cinerea this slit is completely closed by the as- 

 cending wings of the palatine bones. The molar teetb are 

 actually as large as and relatively larger than in N. cinerea. 

 The enamel pattern of the last upper molar is a nearly perfect 

 trefoil, though the posterior reentrant angle on the outer side is 

 shallower than the anterior. 



Variation. The males are considerably larger than the females, 

 and the young are gray in color, as usual in the genus. The 

 Reams Canon specimens are very uniform in color. An imma- 

 ture male from Tres Piedras, Taos County, New Mexico, collected 

 by J. Alden Loring July 4, 1892 (No. 53016, United States Na- 

 tional Museum, Department of Agriculture collection), has the 

 upper parts gray, tinged with buffy-ochraceous, and the white 

 of the under parts clouded posteriorly from the plumbeous of 

 the under fur. A specimen from Fort Wingate, New Mexico, 

 collected by Dr. R.W. Shufeldt (No. 3358 $ , Merriam collection) 

 is a little older, but evidently not adult. It has the upper parts 

 more strongly suffused with pale ochraceous and the belly white. 

 Its tail is less busby than any of the other specimens examined. 

 A young-adult female, collected at Winslow, Arizona, by Clark 



