﻿2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Ater. — [Cams lupus, occidentalis] var. E. Lupus ater Richard- 

 son, Fauna Boreali Americana, Vol. I, p. 70, 1829. Applied to the 

 melanistic individuals supposed by Richardson to occur throughout 

 the range of the American Canis lupus. The name ater is therefore 

 a synonym of occidentalis. 1 



Gigas. — Lupus gigas Townsend, Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila- 

 delphia, N. S., Vol. 2, p. 75. Type locality, " one and a half or two 

 miles west of Fort Vancouver," Washington. This is the first name 

 applied to the timber-wolf of the northwest coast. A skull from 

 Puget Sound (No. 3438) indicates an animal differing from the 

 timber-wolf of the interior region in less great size and in less en- 

 larged teeth. 



Griseo-albus. — Canis occidentalis var. griseo-albus Baird, Mamm. 

 North Amer., p. 104, 1857. This name was used by Baird to indi- 

 cate the normal color variety of the American wolf, the diagnosis 

 of which is : " Color, pure white to grizzled gray." It is thus exactly 

 equivalent to his occidentalis. 



Griseus. — Canis lupus — griseus Sabine, Franklin's Narr. Journ. 

 Polar Sea., p. 654, 1823. Type locality, Cumberland House, Kee- 

 watin, Canada. This is the first name based on the northern timber- 

 wolf. As pointed out by Bangs (Amer. Nat., Vol. 32, p. 505, July, 

 1898), it is preoccupied by Canis griseus Boddaert 1784, a synonym 

 of Urocyon cinereoargenteus. 



Nubilus. — Canis nubilus Say, Long's Exped. Rocky Mts., Vol. 1, 

 p. 169, 1825. Type locality, Engineer Cantonment, near present 

 town of Blair, Washington County, Nebraska. The first name ap- 

 plied to the plains-wolf of the central United States and adjoining 

 portions of Canada. 



Occidentalis. — Canis lupus, occidentalis Richardson, Fauna Bore- 

 ali Americana, Vol. 1, p. 60, 1829. A name first applied to the 

 northern wolves, but subsequently used for widely different animals. 

 The essential part of Richardson's original account, so far as geog- 

 raphy is concerned, is as follows: 



The Common Wolves of the Old and New World have been generally sup- 

 posed to be the same species — the Canis lupus of Linnaeus. The American 



(for use of this name for the eastern timber-wolf, see Miller, Proc. Biol. Soc. 

 Washington, Vol. 25, p. 95, May 4, 1912), and the narrowing of the rostrum 

 is not carried to so great an extreme. The type agrees in size and in the 

 character of the teeth with the specimen from northwest of Fort Yukon 

 marked male by McKay. 



*In a note recently published (Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, Vol. 25, p. 95, 

 May 4, 1912), I came to the same conclusion by a different course of reasoning. 



