66 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 2 82 



possible that an original misidentification was made and that Jordan 

 never actually saw the specimens. Other Wisconsin material was 

 available to Jordan, as two or three specimens (USNM 1412) were 

 collected by Baird in July 1853 from Lac la Belle. The remarks column 

 of the catalog book bears the notation "Jordan ident" for USNM 

 1412, meaning that Jordan examined the specimens and [correctly] 

 identified them. No such notation is entered for USNM 1420 which 

 appears on the same page. It now seems likely that Jordan copied or 

 was informed of the Root River locality without examining the speci- 

 mens, and that he or someone else added that locality to the figure 

 captions without closely checking the specimen data or "List of 

 Illustrations." Subsequently the range of A^". exilis has been stated to 

 include "Lake Michigan" and "the lake," both based on the Root 

 River material. 



The record from the Tiffin River, Manitou Beach, Michigan, has 

 not been re-examined or duplicated. It seems likely that Kirsch 

 misidentified a specimen of Noturus gyrinus or Noturus Jlavus. Since 

 this specimen does not appear to exist, since extensive collecting at 

 the locality has failed to yield further specimens, and since the nearest 

 positive records come from drainages many miles away, it is thought 

 best to regard it as a probable error in identification. Thus, there is 

 no present admissible evidence that exilis occiu's in the Great Lakes 

 basin. 



In Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama, the records of exilis are 

 based on many specimens from the Duck River, the Cumberland 

 River, and the lower Tennessee River basins upstream to the bend 

 in Alabama. N. exilis is not present in the upper Tennessee basin. 



Noturus exilis is abundant in many of the Ozark and sub-Ozarkian 

 streams of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. In the Arkan- 

 sas drainage, it occurs in tributaries to the Neosho River arising in 

 the Ozarks, in most streams east of the lower Arkansas River in 

 Oklahoma, in the Poteau River, and in many tributaries of the Arkan- 

 sas River in Arkansas. In Arkansas and Missouri, it is found in much 

 of the upper White River system. In Kansas and Missouri, the 

 species is found throughout the Osage River system. It is confined 

 in the Missouri River drainage of Missouri to the Osage and the 

 lower tributaries of the Missouri, but in Kansas at least three popu- 

 lations exist in southern tributaries to the Kansas and Missouri 

 Rivers, either as remnants of a wider distribution or as crossovers 

 from the adjacent Osage system. In the upper Mississippi drainage, 

 it is found in several Mississippi tributaries in Illinois, Wisconsin, 

 Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. 



Although recently collected in southern Minnesota (Eddy and 

 Underbill, 1959) the record of Cox (1896) from Blue Earth River, 



