1936] 



MAMMALS OF OREGON 



159 



male and female collected the same date were apparently young 

 of the previous year, showing no indications of breeding. 



In the broad valley near McDermitt, Preble found them living 

 in the same meadows with oregonus and collected four specimens 

 in early June of 1915. So far these two localities show the only 

 Oregon records. 



The specimens collected at the type locality, Paradise, Nev., by 

 Piper, March 3, 1908, and others collected at Mountain City, Nev., 

 by W. K. Fisher, in 1898, and by the writer at Elko and in the Ruby 

 Mountains the same year carry the range of the form well across 

 northern Nevada. 



MARMOTA FLAVIVENTRIS FLAVIVENTRIS (AUDUBON and BACHMAN) 



YELLOW-BELLIED MARMOT; WOODCHUCK; GROUND HOG; ROCKCHUCK; MO-E of 

 the Klamath (C. H. M.) ; CHIK-CHIK-NO of the Wasco 



Arctomys flaviventrfe Audubon and Bachman, Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. Proc., 

 p. 99, 1841. 



Type locality Fixed as 

 Mount Hood by A. H. Howell 

 (1915, p. 40). Type skin in 

 British Museum ; collected 

 by David Douglas, but no lo- 

 cality given. 



General characters. Large 

 and heavy ; legs short, tail 

 short and bushy, ears low, 

 soles wholly naked, thumb a 

 mere rudiment with flat nail ; 

 fur long and lax, concealed 

 by coarse outer hairs. Color 

 approximately the same at 

 all ages and seasons, upper 

 parts dark brown, coarsely 

 grizzled over back and sides 

 with buffy white subterminal 

 sections of coarse outer 

 hairs ; tail plain or rusty 

 brown, fading to yellowish; 

 sides of neck and hams 



bright buffy ochraceous; legs, feet, and lower parts tawny; nose and chin 

 whitish, and sometimes a whitish or grizzled bar across face in front of eyes. 



Measurements. Adult male: Total length, 700 mm; tail, 180; foot, 90; ear 

 (dry), 20, from crown, 10. 



Distribution and habitat. These large, richly colored marmots 

 inhabit the Cascades of Oregon, and extend south through the 

 northern Sierra Nevadas to the Lake Tahoe section, mainly in Tran- 

 sition and Canadian Zones wherever there are extensive rock masses. 

 Their range is very irregular and apparently not continuous, as the 

 smaller plains form, avara, comes to the summit of the Cascades 

 north of Three Sisters, while south of Crater Lake there are no 

 records of marmots in the mountains until the Mount Lassen section 

 is reached. They seem to follow the lava fields of the Klamath and 

 Pit Kiver country, and to have a roundabout, partial connection 

 between the Cascades and the Sierra Nevadas (fig. 30) . 



General habits. These western representatives of our eastern 

 woodchucks are neither " woodchucks ", as they rarely live in the 

 woods, nor " ground hogs," as they rarely live in the ground. They 



FIGURE 30. Range of two forms of woodchucks, 

 or ground hogs, in Oregon : 1, Marmota flaviven- 

 tris flaviventris; 2, M. f. avara. 



