SCIURIDH—ARCTOMYS PRUINOSUS. 927 
lost, and the species does not appear to have come under the notice of any 
other naturalist.”. Gmelin’s name Arctomys pruinosus was based wholly on 
Pennant’s description of the Hoary Marmot, as are all subsequent references 
to this species down to 1829, when Richardson added some further informa- 
tion to the history of the species. He identified with it the Whistler of 
Harmon, and says, if this reference is correctly made, “we may soon hope to 
know more of it, for the traders who annually cross the Rocky Mountains 
from Hudson's Bay to the Columbia and New Caledonia are well acquainted 
with it.” He later adds that ‘‘Mr. Macpherson describes one killed in the 
month of May on the south branch of the Mackenzie as follows:—‘It was 
275 inches long, of which the head 24, and the tail 84. It is, I think, of 
the same genus with the Quebec Marmot. In the fore-teeth, and in the 
shape of the head and body, it resembles a beaver. The hair, especially 
about the neck and shoulders, is rough and strong. The breast and shoulders, 
down to the middle of the body, is of a silver-gray colour; the rest of the 
body and the brush are of a dirty yellowish or brown. The head and legs 
are small and short in proportion to the body,’ 
“Mr. Harmon represents them as about the size of a badger, covered 
with a beautiful long silver-gray hair, and having long bushy tails. Mr. Drum- 
mond says they resemble the badger of the plains (Meles Labradoria) in 
colour, but are of rather smaller size.”* The animal thus indicated is rep- 
resented by a considerable series of specimens in the collection of the 
National Museum, mostly from Arctic America. The Arctomys pruinosus of 
the present article is unquestionably the Arctomys pruinosus of Richardson, 
and there seems to me to be no reason to question the reference of the Hoary 
Marmot of Pennant, and hence the Arctomys pruinosus of Gmelin, to the 
same species. 
In 1829, the year following the publication of Richardson’s first notice 
of his Arctomys pruinosus, Eschscholtz figured and described an Arctomys 
caligatus from specimens obtained near Bristol Bay, on the northwest coast, 
which is unquestionably referable to the Arctomys pruinosus of Richardson. 
Richardson himself, in 1839, notes the great resemblance between the two 
animals. In 1836, King, in the Narrative of Captain Back’s Overland Expe- 
dition to the Arctic Sea, redescribed the species as Arctomys okanaganus. 
Of this species Richardson says, in the Zoblogy of Beechey’s Voyage (p. 12*), 
