114 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



the surface, or it may run into a trill of alarm as the animal dives 

 down the nearest crevice. 



Breeding habits. In the Steens Mountains Sheldon reported the 

 mammae of females arranged in 2 pairs, 1 pair of inguinal and 1 

 of pectoral, on 4 widely separated mammary glands ; but in the fully 

 adult females there seem to be generally 1 pair of inguinal and 2 

 pairs of pectoral. There are no records of number of young for 

 this form, but in others sets of 3 to 5 embryos have been noted. Very 

 little is definitely known of their breeding habits. The half -grown 

 young are out by July and by September are actively helping with 

 the hay gathering. 



Food habits. The food of rock conies is entirely vegetable, green 

 or dry. In summer they eat the tender green grasses and clovers 

 and a host of other plants, including the leaves, flowers, buds, and 

 stems of most of the species growing on or around the rock slide; 

 and in autumn these same plants are cut and carried under the 

 shelter of some large boulder and stacked up green to cure for 

 winter food. The plants dry slowly and keep as green and fresh 

 as the best cured hay, and there is generally an ample supply for a 

 long winter under the deep snow. Sometimes their haystacks are 

 made up mainly of grass, but more often they are a mixture of all 

 the plants available. In the Warner Mountains', the writer recog- 

 nized in one the leaves and twigs of aspen, Ceanothm velutinus, wild 

 currant, Spiraea, Symphoricarpos, Eriogonwm, Phacelia, mint, and 

 grass, but there were many other plants represented. In the Steens 

 Mountains H. H. Sheldon saw them feeding on the leaves of the 

 bitterbrush, Purs Ma. They sometimes store even the green twigs of 

 sagebrush. 



Economic statins. Few rodents are so entirely harmless as these 

 little fellows or of more fascinating interest where they can be 

 watched and studied. Although good eating they are too small to be 

 classed as game. May they long remain to stack their hay and 

 enliven the rock slides with their cheery squeaks. 



OCHOTONA SCHISTICEPS JEWETTI HOWELL 

 BLUE MOUNTAIN CONY; JEWETT'S CONY 



Ochotona schisticeps jewetti Howell, Biol. Soc. Wash. Proc. 32: 100, 1919. 



Type. Collected at head of Pine Creek, near Cornucopia, Oreg., by Stanley 

 G. Jewett, September 3, 1915. 



General characters. Darker colored than scMstteeps and paler than taylori. 

 Summer pelage, upper parts cinnamon gray, becoming ashy gray across back of 

 neck ; ears dark gray or dusky with whitish margins ; feet and belly buffy ; 

 throat and cheeks cinnamon; chin whitish. 



Measurements. Total length, 182 mm; hind foot, 31; ear (dry), from notch 

 to tip, 18. Weight: Dice gives 2 males as weighing 178 and 180 g, and 2 

 females as 150 and 182 g, respectively. (1926, p. 8.) 



Distribution and habitat. In the higher parts of the Blue Moun- 

 tains these gray conies occupy the granite and other gray rock slopes 

 from the base of the mountains at 5,000 feet up to above timber line 

 at 10,000 feet. In no place has the writer found them in the dark- 

 colored lava rock with which their colors would not harmonize. 



