MAMMALS OF SHASTA. 



Sorex shastensis sp. iiov. Shasta Shrew. 



Type from Wagon Camp, Mount Shasta (alt. 5,700 ft. in the lower part of the Cana- 

 dian zone). No. 95450, U. S. Nat. Mns., Biological Survey Coll. Collected Sept, 

 26, 1898, hy W. H. Osgood. Orig. No. 317. 



Cliaracters. — Size small; decidedly smaller than S. vagrans ; tail 

 rather short; ears small, but conspicuous. Third unicuspid smaller 

 than fourth. Skull and teeth peculiar. 



Color. — Type specimen, in change from summer to winter pelage: 

 Head and sides of neck to shoulders dull fulvous brown ; rest of upper 

 parts dark steel gray; uuderparts ashy brown; tail sharply bicolor, 

 dusky above, bufly below, becoming dusky toward tip. 



Cranial cliaracters. — Skull small, decidedly snniller than in vagrans 

 and as small as in californicus ; brain case moderately high — not at all 

 flattened as in californicm ; rostrum rather small (about as in califorui- 

 cus); constriction swollen. Tooth row, as a whole, somewhat shorter 

 than in caUfornicus ; unicuspids decidedly narrower, particularly the 

 first and second; molariform series much as in californicns, but slightly 

 smaller; large premolar very broad posteriorly. 



Measureynents. — Type: Total length, 90; tail vertebra?, 35; hind 

 foot, 12. 



Remarks. — This new species is based on a single specimen caught by 

 W. H. Osgood in a trap set in a springy place among the Shasta firs, 

 immediately above Wagon Camp. In the same trap, and in the iden- 

 tical spot, he caught also specimens of Neosorex navigator and Xeuro- 

 trichus gibhsi major. Several specimens of Sorex vagrans amcenus were 

 caught near by, but no others of this species. 



Sorex shastensis is a small shrew of uncertain affinities. In several 

 respects it resembles aS'. caUfornicus, but differs from this species mark- 

 edly in color, and still more in the form of the cranium and narrow- 

 ness of the unicuspidate teeth. 



Sorex vagrans amcenus Merriam. Sierra Shrew. 



Twenty-two specimens of this small shrew were collected on Shasta 

 and about its base. Two were caught among the tules at Big Spring, 

 in Shasta Valley, on the north side of the mountain; two at Warm- 

 castle Soda Springs, in Squaw Creek A^alley, on the south side; and 

 nineteen in the Canadian zone and lower part of the Iludsonian from 

 Wagon Camp up to upper Squaw Creek, Mud Creek, and Ash Creek. 

 Most of them were trapped under logs in damp places. 



