DESCRIPTION OF A NEW RABBIT FROM ISLANDS OFF 



THE COAST OF VIRGINIA. 



By Edgar A. Mearns, 



Associate in Zoology, U. S. National Museum. 



On a recent visit to Smiths Island, Virginia, in company with 

 Messrs. J. H. Riley and E. J. Browai, the writer obtained skins of a 

 rabbit which proves to be new. 



This cottontail is named in honor of Capt. George D. Hitchens, 

 commanding the life-saving station at Smiths Island, who has long 

 been a contributor to the National Museum collections. He informed 

 me that cottontails have existed continuously on the island during 

 the past fifty years. At one time a number of ''Australian rabbits" 

 were introduced, but speedily died out. This has given rise to the 

 erroneous but more or less current belief that the Smiths Island 

 cottontail is a hybrid. It is, in fact, a pure cottontail, showing no 

 trace of admixture with the genus Oryctolagus. 



SYLVILAGUS FLORID ANUS HITCHENSI, new subspecies. 

 HITCEENS'S COTTONTAIL. 



Sylvilagus floridanus mallurus Nelson (part), North American Fauna, No. 29, 

 August 31, 1909, pp. 166 and 168 (as to specimens enumerated from Fisher- 

 mans and Smiths islands). 



Type specimen. — Cat. No. 155577, U.S.N.M. Adult female from 

 Smiths Island, Northampton County, Virginia, collected by Edgar 

 A. Mearns, May 13, 1910. 



Characters. — Size of Sylvilagus floridanus mallurus (Thomas) from 

 Raleigh, North Carolina. Color paler, with the bright colors (black 

 and rufous) of the upper parts obsolete, giving a pale sandy fulvous 

 shade to these parts; but the backs of the hind legs are a slightly 

 darker chestnut than in the mainland form. The skull is larger, 

 heavier, broader interorbitally, with thickened rostrum and larger 

 audital bullae. All of the teeth are larger. 



Comparative cranial Tneasuremcnis. — Average of four adults, each, 

 of Sylvilagus floridanus mallurus and Sylvilagus floridanus liitclieTisi, 

 the latter in parenthesis. Basilar length, 57.6 (61) mm.; length of 

 nasals, 32.4 (32.4); breadth of rostrum above premolars, 20.7 (21.4); 

 depth of rostrum in front of premolars, 15.7 (17.8); interorbital 

 breadth, 19.1 (20.5); parietal breadth, 27.9 (28.9); diameter of audi- 

 tal bullae, 11 (11.4); length of upper molar series, 13.3 (15.1); breadth 

 across upper molar series, 21 (22.4). 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum^ Vol. 39— No. 1784. 



227 



