Tlie Weasels of Eastern North America. 5 



Audubon and Bachman's ' Quadrupeds of North America ' ap- 

 peared in three vokmies, from 1851 to 1853. In this work are 

 given five sjjecies of weasels, namely, Patorius ennineus, P. agilis, 

 P. fuscus, P. 'piisillus, kind P. freiiatus. Their erinineus and agilis 

 are noveboracensis (the former the male and the latter the female). 

 Their fi'snatus was a combination o^ frenatus and xaiithogemjs. 



In 1857 appeared Professor Baird's great work, ' The Mammals 

 of North America.' He gave six species of weasels as inhabiting 

 eastern North America, namely, P. noveboracensis., P. richardsoni, 

 P. cicognani, P. pusillus, P. longicaitda, and P. frenata. All his 

 species were correct except richardsoni. This animal he had never 

 seen, and not being aware of the great sexual difference in size, he 

 referred the smaller examples of noveboracensis, probably females, 

 to it. His Putorius 23i('SiUm is the P. rixosus of the present paper, 

 he wisely thinking that it was not the .-1/. pasilla of De Kay. His 

 frenatus was the ivne frenatas of Lichtenstein. 



After Baird came a period of great confusion, authors giving 

 all the species or nearly all accorded to eastern North America l)y 

 Baird from any one locality they happened to be writing about. 



Samuels, in his list of the ' Mammals of Massachusetts ' (1861- 

 1862), gave four species as inhabiting that State, namely, richard- 

 soni, cicognani, pusillus, and noveboracensis. Of course these four 

 were the males and females of our two common species, cicog- 

 nani and noveboracensis. 



Dr. Gil2)in, in his ' Mammals of Nova Scotia ' (1866), gave P. 

 richardsoni, P. noveboracensis, and P. cicognani as inhabitants of 

 that province. In reality there is but one weasel in Nova Scotia, 

 and that is P. cicognani. I have examined nearly all the skins 

 Dr. ({ilpin sent to the United States National Museum and find 

 them lal^eled richardsoni and cicognani, according to size. The 

 measurements he gave for the specimen he called noveboracensis 

 indicate a total length 100 millimeters greater tlian the largest 

 male noveboracensis I ever measured and are probably erroneous. 



Gray, in an article in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society 

 of London for 1865, with his usual disregard for all previous 

 names, gives two new ones, namely, "Puiorius erminca, var. ameri- 

 ca7Wf," which includes P. longicauda and P. noveboracensis ; and 

 for P. cicognani, ''3Itcstela {Gale) vulgaris, var. americana.''^ Fortu- 

 nately neither of these names can stand. He based P. richard- 

 soni on Baird; the animal is. as already stated, P. noveboracensis. 

 In 1869 Gray arranged the American weasels in the same way 

 in his ' Catalogue of the Carnivora in the British Museum.' 



