THE MUSEUM. 



'33 



t 



loosely paraphrasing; Audubon and 

 Bachman, says the specimen described 

 by Audubon and Bachman "Was col- 

 lected in 1849 [lege 1S44?) by Col. 

 Fremont somewhere in the vicinity of 

 the South Pass, and is now in the Mu- 

 seum of the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Natural Sciences. He identified with 

 it a spicmien from Sawatch Pass, 

 Rocky Mountains, these two speci- 

 mens being," he says, "all that as yet 

 have come to the notice of natural- 

 ists." 



Throufjh the kind intervention of 

 Mr Whitmer Stone of the Philadel- 

 phia Academy of Natural Sciences, I 

 have in hand the type specimen ob- 

 tained by Fremont. It proves to be 

 the form of Chickaree found throup;h- 

 out the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, 

 to which the name fremonti, since 

 1857, has been currently ap[)lied It 

 allows also that it could not have 

 come from "the vicinity of South 

 Pass" at the southern end of the Wind 

 River chain in Wyoming, the form 

 there being the very different 5. h. 

 vcntorum. An examination of the 

 type shows it to be in winter pelage, 

 the soles being thickly furred, the ears 

 well tufted, and the general pelage be- 

 ing that of winter or late spring. Even 

 the feet, where change to summer 

 coat first begins to appear, show very 

 little departure from winter condi- 

 tions. The specimen might have 

 been taken in May or even as late as 

 the middle of June. The label on the 

 • specimen (285 Typej is evidently of 

 very recent date and erroneously at- 

 tributes the specimen to "J. K. Town- 

 send" and gives the locality as "South 

 Pass, Rrcky Mts " I wrote to Mr. 

 Stone regarding this point and he 

 kindly replied as follows (under date 

 of May 20, 1898): "The specimen, 

 along with others, seems to have been 

 presented by Townsend to our Acad- 

 emy; he apparently received it from 

 Fremont. You will notice that Au- 

 dubon (and Bachman) gives the spe- 

 cies as 5. frcmonti, Townsend. The 

 occurrence of Townsend's name on 



the label instead of F'remont's is due 

 to the fact that museum records of 

 old days seem to have placed more 

 stress on the donor than the collector. 

 The label now on the specimen I 

 transcribed from the base of an old 

 stand, about 1890, on which the ani- 

 mal was mounted There is no other 

 specimen of -S fiiinonti in our col- 

 lection. " 



From the above it is evident be- 

 yond reasonable doubt this specimen 

 is the actual type of Audubon &Bach- 

 man's "Sciurus froiionti. Town- 

 send." It therefore becomes import- 

 ant to determine as near as possible 

 the type locality. Reference to Fre- 

 mont's Reports to the U. S. War De- 

 partment show that his two visits to 

 the region of the South Pass were re- 

 spectively in August, 1842, and Au- 

 gust, 1843, and that the season alone 

 thus rules out of consideration this lo- 

 cality as the source of the type Sciur- 

 us fremonti. On his return journey, 

 in 1844, he skirted the southern Wa- 

 satch Mountains as far north as Utah 

 Lake, and then turned eastward to 

 the north fork of the Platte in Colo- 

 rado, which he reached June iith, 

 passing up the North Platte to the 

 headwaters of the Arkansas, and down 

 this river to the plains at the present 

 site of Pueblo, Colorado, which point 

 he reached June 29th. The specimen, 

 which became the type of .S. fremonti 

 could not have been taken in the 

 Wasatch range, as the present ma- 

 terial shows that the form of Chick- 

 aree occurring near Utah Lake is .S". 

 //. vcntonim. On the other hand it 

 might have been taken in the Park re- 

 gion of Colorado, where this and only 

 this form of Chickaree is known to 

 occur, and the season June iithto 

 26th, fully agrees with the condition, 

 as already stated. Probably, there- 

 fore, the Park region of central Colo- 

 rado may be safely considered as the 

 type locality of Sciurus fremonti. 



Sciurus fremonti neomexicanus, 

 subsp. nov. Taos Chickaree. Win- 

 ter pelage. Similar to 5. fremonti. 



