896 MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN RODENTIA. 
though discredited by Say and every naturalist since his time who has had 
the opportunity of becoming personally familiar with the animal on its native 
plains, is hardly less difheult to eradicate from the popular mind than the 
idea that it is in reality a sort of small dog, as its common vernacular name 
implies.* 
The habitat of the present species is confined to the dryer portion of 
the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, where it is found from Western 
Texas northward to the forty-ninth parallel. The eastern limit of its range 
is near the ninety-eighth meridian. Specimens are in the collection from 
Fort Chadbourne, the Staked Plains, and other localities in Western Texas, 
and from near the Pecos River in Southeastern New Mexico. It ranges over 
the western half of Kansas and thence westward in Colorado to the foot-hills 
of the Rocky Mountains, beyond which I have been unable to trace it, it 
being immediately replaced in the Parks to the westward by C. columbianus. 
In Wyoming, it ranges westward over the Laramie Plains, and even to the 
sources of the North Platte. Further northward, it likewise appears to uni- 
formly reach the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, beyond which the 
species apparently does not extend. It is found, according to Dr. Hay- 
den, as far down the Missouri as the mouth of the White River (in about 
latitude 43° 40’), near which point it was first met with by Audubon in 
his ascent of that river in 1843. It occurs thence northward and west- 
ward over the plains of the Yellowstone and Missouri, but over large areas 
of the more barren portions its settlements occur only at infrequent inter- 
vals. At more favorable localities, they occupy the country continuously over 
hundreds of square miles. It has been met with by both Dr. Suckley and 
Dr. Coues on the Milk River. Respecting the northern limit of its range 
Dr. Coues kindly adds the following :— 
‘“‘T have no personal knowledge of the Prairie-dog beyond 49°, the 
northern boundary of Montana, and Richardson speaks of it as restricted 
to the Missouri Basin. During my connection with the U. 8. Northern 
Boundary Commission, in 1873—4, when I passed along the parallel of 49° 
from the Red River of the North to the Rocky Mountains, I observed no 
* The highest absurdity of misrepresentation is reached in Hamilton-Smith’s “ original figure”, in 
Griffith’s Cuvier’s Animal Kingdom (vol. iii, plate facing p. 198), drawn (it is said) from the specimen 
brought to Philadelphia by Lewis and Clarke. In this figure is represented the muzzle of a pug-nosed 
dog, between the half-open lips of which are seen an uninterrupted row of teeth, resembling those of a 
carnivorous animal! 
