MAMMALS ok TIIK MEXICAN BOUNDARY. 



471 



prominent, almost forming a bead, as in Sigmodon. The frontal bone 

 is expanded and depressed postorbitally. The nasals end m advance 

 of the intermaxillaries, and the upper molar series narrows rapidly 

 from before backward and has the anterior loop of the first molar un- 

 divided by a sulcus, much as in X. inU rmedia. The cranial variations 

 in this species, due to growth and individual differentiation, have been 

 treated of in a special paper by Dr. J. A. Allen, who had at his com- 

 mand a splendid amount of material for the purpose and has furnished 

 mammalogists with very important data to aid them in making their 

 comparisons of other species of this and other genera. 



Remarks. — Specimens of tins species from Fort Clark, Kinney 

 County, Texas, are rather paler in color and not quite so large as those 

 from Brownsville, Texas, though they are distinctly referable to the 

 typical form, which is replaced in the Eastern Desert Tract by the sub- 

 species canescens. 



Habits and local distribution. — The home of the Texas wood-rat is in 

 the woods of Texas, usually near water. A female taken at Fort 

 Clark, Texas, January 13, 1893, would have produced three young. 

 Xests of this rat are commonly built about the roots of decayed trees 

 that are surrounded by thickets. 



Measurements of H specimens of Xrotoma mieropus. 



" American Museum of Natural History. 



NEOTOMA MICROPUS CANESCENS Allen. 



PALLID WOOD RAT. 



X i ultima mirn, pus canesct ns Allen, Hull. Am. Mus Nat. I [isl . III. No. 2, June 30, 1891, 

 p. 285 (original description). Miller and Rbhn, Proc. Bost. Soc Nat. Hist., 

 XXX, No. 1, Dec 27. l'.lOl.p. l07(Syst. Results Study X. Am. Mam. to the close 

 of 1900). 



Neotoma mtcropws, Merri am, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1894, p. 244 (in part). 



[Neotoma] micropus, Elliot, Field Col. Mus., Zool. Ser., II, L901,p. L55 (in part); 

 IV. 1904, p. 281 (pari i. 



a Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., VI, L894, pp. 233-246, pi. iv. 



