MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 245 



rare. The common ones, with a few exceptions (Putorius lutreolus, P. 

 ermineus, and Mephitis mephitica among the carnivores, Vespertilio sub- 

 ulatus and Lasiurus noveboraeensis among the bats), belong to the three 

 families of rodents, — the squirrels (Sciuridce), the mice (Muridce), and 

 the hares (Leporidce), — and to the Balcenidce and Delpkinidce, which 

 latter are, of course, marine. In species and families, the carnivores 

 and rodents are about equally represented, but in individuals any one 

 of the more common rodents outnumbers all the carnivores together. 

 Probably a single species of Arvicola (A. riparius) alone outnumbers, 

 when it is most abundant, all the other mammals. 



The list of Extirpated Species, forming Table II, five in number, is 

 composed entirely of such animals as, from their large size and being 

 special objects of the chase, would be expected to earliest disappear. 

 Two of the four species of Cervidce (Alee malchis, Tarandus rangifer) 

 have not existed in the southern half of New England since the discov- 

 ery of the continent by Europeans, except in the mountains of "Western 

 Massachusetts, and there probably only as occasional migrants from the 

 contiguous region north. They may have existed in comparatively 

 recent times in portions of the Alleghanies, but respecting such existence 

 we have no certain record. At a remote period they must have lived 

 much farther south than they do now, or than they have within the last 

 three centuries, since bones of the Caribou have been found by Profes- 

 sor Wyman in the Kjoekkenmoeddings of Southern Maine, and teeth that 

 he believes, but does not positively assert, belong to this species in those 

 of Cape Cod. A positive evidence of the former much greater south- 

 ward extension of the habitat of this animal is indeed already at hand, a 

 small antler and fragments of others of the Caribou being included in 

 the very large collection of the remains of living and extinct species of 

 mammalia recently brought by Professor N. S. Shaler to the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky.* Remains 

 of the elk and the moose having been found in the shell-mounds of the 

 Atlantic coast as far south as New Jersey, we have evidence that these 

 species existed thus far south in comparatively recent times. 



To the list of the " extirpated species," nine t that are now ex- 



* See Professor Shaler's remarks concerning these specimens in Proc. Bost. Soc. 

 Nat. Hist., Vol. XIII, 1869. 



t Lynx canadensis, L. rufus, Canis lupus, Mustela Pennantii, M. marles, Gulo luscus, 

 Ursus arctos, Cariacus virginianus, Erethizon dorsaius. 



