324. MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN RODENTIA. 
through var. bairdi, it extends throughout the higher parts of the Rocky 
Mountains south, at least to Cantonment Burgwyn, New Mexico; to the 
eastward of the Missouri River, as var. virginianus, it occurs in Minnesota, 
and thence eastward throughout the northern parts at least of nearly all the 
northern tier of States, and in the Alleghanies southward, at least to Vir- 
ginia, and on the Atlantic coast to Connecticut. Its limit in the Eastern 
States hence nearly coincides with that of the Alleghanian fauna. To the 
northward, it ranges to the limit of trees, extending even to the very borders 
of the Arctic Barren Grounds. 
The range of the several varieties is not so easily indicated. Var. ame- 
ricanus seems to remain well-defined as that type southward to New Bruns- 
wick and Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast, and as far as the Red River 
Settlements in the interior. Var. Gatrdi, occupying the higher parts of the Rocky 
Mountains, separates the two southern forms, virginianus and washingtoni, 
and doubtless extends a long way northward into the habitat of var. ameri- 
canus. Var. americanus is the form received from Southern Alaska, but its 
southern limit on the Pacific coast is not as yet known. Var. washingtoni, 
however, has been received from as high as about latitude 55°. So far as 
our present knowledge goes, we may define the habitat of var. virginianus as 
occupying the Atlantic coast-region from Nova Scotia to Connecticut; the 
whole of the higher parts of the Apalachian Highlands as far south as 
Virginia, and probably to North Carolina; in the interior, the northern half 
of the northern tier of States, and the southern half of the Canadas, west- 
ward to the highlands bordering the northern shore of Lake Superior, where 
here and in Northern Minnesota it doubtless gradually merges into variety 
americanus. 
Synonymy.—We find allusions to the Zepus americanus auct. in the 
writings of several of the early authors, among whom is Kalm, who refers 
to it briefly in his Travels (vol. ili, p. 59, English ed.), and supposed it to be 
identical with the Varying Hare of Europe. The first specimens reached 
England in 1771, and were described in the Philosophical Transactions (vol. 
Ixii, p. 4) by Daines Barrington in 1772 under the name of the ‘“Hudson’s 
Bay Quadruped”. In the same volume, it is again more fully described by 
J. R. Forster, who gives also some account of its habits, but, in so doing, 
quotes Kalm’s reference to quite a different species (the Z. sylvaticus Bach.) 
inhabiting New Jersey. Pennant, in his History of Quadrupeds (in 1784), 
