MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 109 



ardson's work from .1/. erminea to M, Richardsonii, he believing them to be 

 distinct species, and thus separated all the larger American weasels from 

 those of the Old World. At this point begins the uncertainty and confusion 

 that has long existed in regard to the number of species of American 

 weasels and their distinctive characters. But no changes were currently 

 adopted by American authors tdl ten or twelve years later, when, in 

 1311, Audubon and Bachman, in the Proceedings and Journal of the Phila- 

 edlphia Academy ot Natural Sciences, described a specimen taken on Long 

 Island, NewYork, as a i,c,\ species, under the name of Mustela fusca.* In 

 the following year Dr. De Kay, in his Report on the Mammals ot' New 

 York, redescribed this specimen under the name applied to it by Audubon 

 and Bachman, and at the same time separated the larger representatives 

 of the ermine as a species distinct from the Old World ermine and from the 

 supposed northern .1/- Richardsonii of Bonaparte. But this author very 

 frankly adds : " I have never seen tin; true ermine in its summer dress, and 

 only know it from Pennant's description (Arct. ZooL Vol I, p. 7.3y" He 

 calls the American ermine weasel Putorius noveboract nsis. and regards it as 

 differing generieally from two other species of weasel {M. pusilla = M. 

 vulgaris Linn, and M. fusca And. and Bach.) described by him as also in- 

 habiting NewYork. In 1S53, the authors of Viviparous Quadrupeds of 

 North America, in the third volume of that work (p. 184), characterized 

 another species as new, also from New York specimens, which they called 

 Putorius agiiis. In the same volume, under P. fuscus. they observe that 

 whereas the number of North American weasels was believed by the older 

 authors to be at most two, while some admitted but one, " there are now 

 five, four of which are found in New York. - ' If we add to the new names 

 of Audubon and Bachman and De Kay the three bestowed on American 

 weasels by Bonaparte, we have seven specific designations for those of 

 Eastern North America alone; to these may be added P. erminea and I'. 

 vulgaris, Audubon and Bachman fully believing these species to be common 

 to both continents, thus making nine. 



This was the condition of the subject when Professor Baird revised the 

 group in his Report on the Mammals of North America, in 1857. In this 

 work eight species are admitted as inhabitants of North America. Two 

 (P. fremitus and P. xanthogenys) are considered as exclusively southern 

 and western in their distribution; one (P. Kaneii) as northwestern (" Behr- 

 ing's Straits and Siberia"), and three P. Pusilla, P. Cicognanii, and P. 

 Richardsonii) as distributed throughout the northern parts of the conti- 

 nent and extending southwards into the United States. Another (P. novc- 

 boracensis') is regarded as ranging from Massachusetts and Northern New 



* Proc, Vol. I, p. 92 ; Journ. Vol. VIII, 1842, p. 280. 

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