Merriam American Wood Rats. 127 



mature specimens of N pinetorum, but the marked cranial char 

 acters serve to distinguish it at once. No specimens in summer 

 pelage are at hand .from the type locality, but specimens from 

 Hermosillo and Magdalena, apparenty the same sub-species, are 

 grayer, the black hairs of the back are inconspicuous, and the 

 upper side of the tail is less black. 



Neotoma intermedia angusticeps subsp. nov. 



Type from S. W. CORNER OP GRANT Co., NEW MKXICO (only 5 miles from 

 Mexican boundary). No. lif d" a( l- Merriam Collection. Collected April 

 12, 1886, by A. W. Anthony (Original number 62). 



Measurements of type specimen: Total length 335 (measured in flesh). Tail 

 vertebrae 150 ; hind foot 33 ; ear from anterior base 25 (in dry skin). 



General characters. Similar to JV, albigula, but ears smaller ; 

 color more strongly fulvous; skull more elongated and narrower. 



Color. (Summer pelage) Upper parts fulvous, becoming ochraceous buff' 

 on the head, and abundantly lined with black hairs; feet and under parts 

 creamy white to roots of hair, except on sides of belly where the basal hair 

 is plumbeous; tail bicolor, grayish brown above, white beneath. 



Cranial characters. Skull similar to that of albigula but longer and more 

 slender : Basal length 42 ; basilar length of Hensel 39 5 ; greatest zygomatic 

 breadth 24 ; interorbital constriction 6. Cranium rather smoothly rounded 

 not so angular as in intermedia and albigula; zygomatic arches narrow and 

 less angular posteriorly than usual in the group ; frontals broad interorbitally 

 but not widening rapidly behind constriction, the orbital margins neither 

 beaded nor upturned ; nasals cuneate ; ascending branches of premaxillse 

 normally thickened behind nasals but not divaricating ; interparietal shield 

 subquadrate ; anterior loop of m * only slightly indented by sulcus. 



Subgenus TEONOMA Gray, 1843. 



Type, Neotoma cinerea drummondi (Richardson) from the Rocky Mts. 57 N . 



Tail very large, bushy, and somewhat distichous, like a squirrel's ; hind 

 feet very large. 



Rostrum much elongated, measuring more than one-third the total length 

 (if cranium ; posterior roots of zygomata widely spreading ; sagittal area 

 long, narrow, and sharply angular, its broadest part far back, on or nearly 

 on plane of anterior border of interparietal, whence the sides bend abruptly 

 back to interparietal shields ; spheno-palatine vacuties closed or open.* 



*In a previous communication (Proc. Biol. Soc. "Wash, viii, July, 1893, 112), I called at 

 tention to the circumstance that the long vacuities always present on each side of the 

 presphenoid and anterior part of the basispheuoid iii Neotoma proper, are closed by as 

 cending wings from the palatine bones in N. cinerea and occidentalis . I then regarded 

 this character as of sub-generic weight. It now appears to be of specific weight only, 

 for the vacuities are open in the new species from Colorado here described as N. orolestes. 



