ZAPODIDAI—ZAPUS HUDSONIUS—GENERAL HISTORY. 477 
ing both northern and southern limits of its distribution. It inhabits the 
greater part of British America and the United States, from Atlantic to 
Pacific. ‘The northernmost recorded locality I have noted is Great Slave 
Lake, latitude 62°; and the southernmost is Virginia, where I havé myself 
observed it. It was originally described from Hudson’s Bay, Labrador, and 
Canada, and appears to be particularly numerous in the last-named region and 
northern half of the United States. Audubon surmises, with much reason, 
that it exists south of Virginia, at least in mountainous regions; while there 
is no doubt of its presence in elevated portions of Arizona and New Mexico, 
which harbor such a truly boreal animal as Gulo luscus. We have found it 
in Dakota, and it is known to occur on the Pacific coast, in Washington Ter- 
ritory; while the moist and comparatively warm climate of the wooded 
region, thence northward, we may properly surmise, will carry its habitat far 
into Alaska. Its dispersion will probably ultimately prove to be little, if any, 
less extensive than that of Hesperomys leucopus; although, as it is more 
strictly a woodland animal, there are large treeless areas within its general 
range where probably it does not exist. 
HISTORY OF THE SPECIES 
The latter part of the last century gave us our earliest accounts of this 
species, under various names, from three apparently separate and independent 
sources,—Pennant, Davies, and Barton. Thomas Pennant is said to have first 
described the animal under the name of the ‘Long-legged Mouse of Hud- 
son’s Bay”, or some equivalent expression ;* and’ this became the basis of 
the first technical appellation quoted, Dipus hudsonius, conferred by Pro- 
fessor Zimmermann in 1780. Pennant erred in hastily identifying the ani- 
mal sent from Hudson’s Bay by Mr. Graham with the Mus longipes of Pallas, 
or Dipus meridianus of Gmelin, an Asiatic quadruped. The same author had 
also a ‘‘ Labrador Rat”, which is no other than the present species. J. Sabine 
is currently accredited with the term Mus labradorius, derived from this 
source; but a Dipus labradorius had before appeared, upon the same basis, 
in Turton’s English version of the Linn.-Gm. Systema Naturee (1806). 
About the year 1798, General Thomas Davies communicated to the Lin- 
nean Society an aceount of an animal he called the ‘Jumping Mouse of 
Canada”, which was published in the Transactionst of that body for 1798, the 
* The reference is not at hand as I write. 
tAn Account of the Jumping Mouse of Canada. By T. Davies. < Trans. Linn. Soc. iv, 1795, pp. 
155-157, pl. 8, two lower figs. Named Dipus canadensis on p. 157. 
