MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 14! 



Measiirements {canadensis^ . — Total length, looo mm. (39)^ in.) ; tail 

 vertebrae, 100 (4) ; hind foot, 225 (8y^) ; breadth of front foot about 80 

 (SA); {ruffus) 900 (35^); 170 (63/<); 180 (7/8); 50 (2). 



Eastern Bay Lynx; Wild Cat. Lynx ruffus (Gueldenstaedt). 



1776. Felis ruffus Gueldenstaedt, Novi. Commentarii Acad. Scient. Imp. 

 Petropolitanse (1775), vol. 20, p. 484. 



1897. Lynx ruffus Rhoads, Proceedings Acad. Nat. Sciences, Phila., p. 32. 



Type locality. — New York. 



Faimal distribution. — Lower Canadian, transition and austral life zones ; 

 Maine to Georgia ; west to, and including, Mississippi Valley. 



Distribution in Pa. and N.J. — Formerly abundant over the entire territory 

 named. Still numerous in the Alleghany region, and locally increasing in the 

 deforested wilderness of northwestern Pa. Exterminated in only 13 of the 

 counties of Pa. Occasionally met with in Mercer, Warren, Passaic, and 

 Sussex Cos., N. J., and supposed to linger in some of the southeastern coun- 

 ties of N. J. 



Records in Fa. — Comparing Warren's statistics of bounties and reports 

 from nearly all the counties of Pa. with my own long hst of answers from 

 about 40 correspondents in different parts of the state the result is rather sur- 

 prising. By these it appears that there is only a comparatively small area 

 surrounding and north of Pittsburg, and a somewhat larger area between the 

 foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Philadelphia in which the bay lynx 

 or wild cat has become exterminated. The counties wholly comprised in 

 these areas are Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Crawford, Erie, Mercer, 

 and Washington, in the west, and Bucks,* Chester, Delaware, Montgomery 

 and Philadelphia in the east, 13 in all. As already stated above under the 

 article on Canada lynx, in some of the northwestern counties the wild cat is 

 actually increasmg, especially since the bounty was removed. When we 

 couple this fact with the evidence that in only one-sixth of the entire com- 

 monwealth has this highly destructive animal been extirpated, we get some 

 conception of the wilderness condition of a great area in the Keystone state, 

 as well as of the peculiar fitness of the bay lynx to survive and thrive under 

 the altered conditions here imposed by man in the last hundred years. 



Records i?i N. J. — Northern part. — " Very rare and probably will be wholly 

 extinct in a year or two. In Mercer, Middlesex, Essex, Hunterdon, etc., they 

 have been for some years extinct, and it is merely a matter of speculation as 

 to whether or not they are found about the Blue Mountains [Warren and 



* The last specimen in these Cos. of which I find record is one shot in Bucks Co. near the 

 Montgomery Co. line in February, i860 (Rockhill township). — See Buck, Hist. Montgom. 

 Co., 1884, p. 436. 



