Vol. XV, pp. 167-172 August 6, 1902 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



FOUR NEW ARCTIC FOXES. 

 BY C. HART MERRIAM. 



The White or Arctic fox of Lapland* and Siberia was de- 

 scribed by Linnseus in 1758 under the name Canis lagojnis 

 (Syst. Nat., Ed. 10, p. 40, 1758). A related form from Iceland 

 (the Sooty fox of Pennant), was named Cam's fuUginosus by 

 Shaw in the year 1800 (Gen, Zool., Vol. I, pt. II, p. 331, 1800). 

 So far as I am aware no other names for members of the group 

 were proposed until 1898, when Barrett-Hamilton and Bonhote 

 in a joint paper described a small form from Spitzbergen 

 as subspecies spifzberf/ene7isis (Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist., 7th 

 ser., I, p. 287, April, 1898). But they state that they are unable 

 to distinguish the Spitzbergen form from the one from Iceland — 

 named fnllyinosus by Shaw a century earlier. If the two are 

 the same, spUzhergenensis of course becomes a synonym of 

 fnUginosiis. 



In 1900 I described a small Arctic fox from Hall Island, Ber- 

 ing Sea, under the name hallem^h (Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., 

 II, p. 15, March 14, 1900). 



The material at present available for study is utterly insuf- 

 ficient to admit of a satisfactory revision of the group. Barrett- 

 Hamilton and Bonhote had few if any skins with skulls from 



*The type locality may be restricted to Lapland. 



32— Biol. Soc. Wash. Vol. XV, 1902. (167) 



