74 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [FEB. 23, 



panied by a competent naturalist. Large collections were at the 

 same time made by other officers of the army stationed at various 

 posts throughout the distant West, and also by the United 

 States and ]\[exican Boundary Survey. Although the collections 

 made by the Boundary Survey were made the subject of a special 

 report, they formed also a part of the material on which was based 

 Baird's memorable ''Eighth Volume," as this work is familiarly 

 known among mammalogists. These collections were, by act of 

 Congress, all transmitted to the Smithsonian Institution, and 

 were thus brought together as a single collection, to be elab- 

 orated, fortunately, by one of the most competent naturalists 

 America has yet produced. 



But the volume under notice was not the sole outcome of these 

 various Government surveys. Other volumes of the Pacific 

 Eiilroad Reports contain the special field reports of the various 

 naturalists of the different routes surveyed, accompanied by nu- 

 merous plates of new or previously un6gured species. These re- 

 ports embody the field notes of the collectors, and thus admir- 

 ably supplement with biographical matter Baird's exhaustive 

 systematic treatise. Hence to Gambel, Woodhouse, Kennerly, 

 Cooper, Gibbs, Sackley, Heermann, Newberry, Trowbridge, aiid 

 Gunnison — names well ingrained in the literature of many de- 

 partments of North American natural history — we are deeply 

 indebted for much of our information respecting the habits and 

 distribution of the mammals of Western ISIorth America. 



Since the publication of Professor Baird's great work in 1857, 

 several monographs have appeared treating of particular orders 

 or families. In 1864 the Smithsonian Institution published Dr. 

 Harrison Allen's "Monograph of the Bats of North America," 

 an octavo of about ICO pages, illustrated with numerous wood- 

 cuts. This was the first general systematic treatise on North 

 American bats since the works of Godman and Harlan, pub- 

 lished nearly forty years before, and it remains still our stan- 

 dard work on this group, and the only special treatise on the 

 North American species of the order. Twenty species are recog- 

 nized, and manv others referred to as unidentifiable. 



In 1866 Dr. Theodore N. Gill published a " Prodrome of a 

 Monograph of the Pinnipedes," giving a systematic synopsis of 

 the families, genera, and species of the marine Carnivora — the 

 seals and their allies. 



In 1870 I published a monograph of the family Otariidae, or 

 Eared Seals,' a paper of 108 pages, with three plates and a num- 

 ber of woodcuts, giving a detailed account of their osteology and 



' Bull. Mus. Co-.up. Zool., II., No. 1, 1870, pp. 1-108, pll. i.-iii. 



