Tlie Weasels of Eastern North America. 15 



begins to overlap the range of P. richnrdsoni clcofinani in Con- 

 necticut and New York, and thence northward gradually gets 

 rarer as cicognani becomes commoner, until in the Canadian zone 

 we have cicognani alone. 



There is a slight variation in the color of the under parts, which, 

 to a certain extent is geographical, for southern examples as a 

 rule have the belly yellow and northern ones have it white, but 

 the difference is not altogether constant, and does not warrant 

 dividing novehoracensh into two races. 



It is unfortunate that DeKay cannot have the credit of naming 

 this weasel, and still more so since Ave know that Emmons and 

 DeKay were fast friends, and that Emmons meant to give him 

 full credit of his discovery. The type locality of P. novebora- 

 ceasis must, I think, be considered to be Massachusetts although 

 Emmons in describing it mentions no locality in that >State, nor 

 even the State itself, but says only : " It is common to the middle 

 and northern States." Of course, Emmons was writing only of 

 the mammals of Massachusetts, which fact may l^e assumed to 

 tie the type locality down to that State. 



The male norehoracensis is more often seen than tlie female, and 

 appears to be much commoner. In examining large series of 

 weasels of any species one is always struck by the great prepon- 

 derance of males, outnumbering the females about 5 to 1. There 

 may be, however, some other cause to account for this, since the 

 males are perhaps easier to trap or more active or courageous 

 and therefore more often seen and killed ; hence an examination 

 of skins alone may give a false idea of the relative numljcrs of 

 the sexes. 



The sexual difference in size is very striking in P. novebora- 

 censis. The male is a large and powerful weasel and does not 

 hesitate to attack and kill animals the size of the cotton-tail 

 rabbit and the domestic hen, while the female is such a little 

 slender creature that it seems almost incredible that she can nurse 

 and luring up a litter of males each of which soon grows to be 

 much larger than herself. On June 5, 1894, some men at work 

 on our place, at Wareham, Massachusetts, saw three weasels of 

 this species cross a road and go into a stone wall. They imme- 

 diately ran for a gun, and by imitating the squeaking of a mouse 

 succeeded in attracting one, the adult female, out of the wall and 

 shot her. I saw that she had been nursing, and placed some 

 steel traps along the wall in positions where the other two would 



