246 BULLETIN OF THE 



tretnely rare, some of them probably being but casual visitors from 

 Vermont or New York, must soon be added. The fisher and the wol- 

 verine may be even now extinct, and the common deer exists in the 

 wild state only by legal protection. 



The three adventitious species (see Table III), which are the most 

 noxious of our mammalia, are intruders that, like many of the common 

 weeds, have accompanied civilized man in his voyages till they are 

 almost cosmopolitan in their distribution. 



Table IV, composed of northern species, consists, with one exception 

 (Arvicola Gapperi), also of species of large size, and such as are special 

 objects of the chase, either for their fur or for food. They hence early 

 disappear before the advance of civilization, and it is now almost im- 

 possible to determine in respect to some of them where was formerly 

 their natural southern limit of distribution. At present none of them 

 (Lepus americanus excepted) range below the southern boundary of 

 the Canadian fauna, though some may have formerly extended across 

 the next fauna south. The occurrence of Mustela martes and M. Pen- 

 nantii in the Alleghanies, the latter as far south as Buncomb County, 

 North Carolina, is well established,* but they seem to be,' or to have 

 been, — they being now apparently nearly exterminated there, — con- 

 fined to the mountains, and hence also to the Canadian fauna. Yet 

 one or both of them have occurred in a few known instances at points 

 rather more southern, faunally, than their usual range, but apparently 

 only during casual migrations in winter. 



The Erethizon dorsatus, however, seems to have formerly occnrred 

 at points clearly within the Alleghanian fauna, as in Western New 

 York,f Northern Ohio, | Northern Indiana, Southern Michigan, and 

 Southern Wisconsin ; § but it has disappeared in all the more thickly 

 settled parts of the United States ; east of the Mississippi it does 

 not now occur south of the Canadian fauna. 



The Lepus americanus, also chiefly northern in its distribution, 

 ranges, as before stated, a little farther south than the others, and finds 

 its southern limit near the south'ern boundary of the Alleghanian fauna. 



* Audubon and Bachman, Quad. N. Am., Vol. I, p. 314. 

 t Dr. J. E. DeKay, N. Y. Fauna, Vol. I, p. 79. 



X Wm. Case, Esq., in Audubon and Bachman's Quad. N. Am., Vol. I, p. 285. 

 § R. Kennicott, Pat. Off. Rep., Agr., 1857, p. 91; I. A. Lapham, Transact. Wise. State 

 Agr. Soc, 1852, p. 340. 



