GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE BADGER. 279 



Audubon and Bacliman, writing in 1851, state that they 

 were not able to trace the Badger within a less distance from 

 the Atlantic than the neighborhood of 'Fort Union (which 

 stood at the southeastern corner of the Territory of Montana 

 as at present bounded). But there is abundant evidence that 

 the species formerly occurred far east of the Mississippi ; and 

 even now its range extends to that river. One of the States 

 along the Mississippi has in fact acquired a cant name from 

 this animal, being known by the soubriquet of the "Badger 

 State ''. In 1858, Prof. Baird gives the habitat as " Iowa and 

 Wisconsin to the Pacific coast, and from Arkansas to 49^ N. 

 lat. (To 580 N. lat, Kich.)" The animal formerly extended 

 eastward in the United States to Ohio at least. A letter ad- 

 dressed by Mr. Edward Ortou, not long since, informs me of 

 its occurrence near Toledo in that State, about twenty years 

 previously, and of its extinction there. Mr. Eobert Kennicott, 

 in 1853-54, has the species among the mammals of Illinois ,* 

 while in Iowa, writes Mr. Allen in 1869, " the species is 

 probably nearly as numerous as formerly." The eastward 

 range in the United States to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Mich- 

 igan, Iowa, and Minnesota, as well as the oblique trend in 

 British America to Hudson's Bay, thus makes the distribution 

 of the animal more or less closely coincident with that of some 

 of the Spermophilesj these animals, with the Badger and Kit 

 Fox, being highly characteristic species of the central treeless 

 region of the United States, where they occur in countless 

 multitudes. 



To the southward, the range of the typical Badger cannot 

 be precisely given, for the reason that there the characters of 

 the animal melt insensibly into those of the Mexican subspe- 

 cies herlandieri. The change becomes marked in Texas, Kew 

 Mexico, Arizona, and Southern and Lower California. I have 

 personally traced the typical form into Colorado, and it is said 

 by Drs. Coues and Yarrow to be very common throughout 

 Western Utah and Eastern Nevada, but less abundant in I^ew 

 Mexico and Arizona. To the extraordinary abundance of the 

 animal in the Upper Missouri country I shall again refer in 

 speaking of its habits. Dr. J. S. Newberry has indicated its 

 abundance in Eastern California, Utah, and Oregon. Mr. 

 George (xibbs says that the Badger, called by the Yakima In- 

 dians WeeWda, was not seen by him west of the Cascade 

 Mountains of Washington Territory, though very common on 



