NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 183 



It seems probable that this big animal was the only form of 

 mink to be found in the eastern part of the Gulf of Maine in 

 earlier times. That it also ranged to Nova Scotia seems likely 

 from the account by J. B. Gilpin (1867) of large skins from that 

 region that measured as much as 32.5 inches in total length, 

 though perhaps slightly stretched. At the present day the 

 mink occurring along the Maine coast represents Mustela 

 vison mink, the more southern race, of which a large male will 

 seldom measure over 23 inches. Evidently this latter race, 

 which has somewhat of a liking for seacoasts, has taken the 

 place formerly held by the now extinct sea mink. Possibly, 

 too, circumstances favorable to this eastward spread within 

 the last century contributed to the driving out of the larger 

 animal. 



BLACK-FOOTED FERRET 



MUSTELA NIGRIPES (Audubon and Bachman) 



Putorius nigripes Audubon and Bachman, Quadrupeds of North America, vol. 2, p. 



297, 1851 (Fort Laramie, Laramie County, Wyoming). 

 FIGS.: Audubon and Bachman, 1851, pi. 93; Coues, 1877, pi. 7 (skull) ; Nelson, 1918, p. 



449, lower fig., col. 



This ferret is of special interest on account of its being in 

 North America the only representative of the Old World group 

 of black-bellied weasels to which the polecats and their rela- 

 tives of eastern and northern Asia belong. On account of its 

 angular heavy skull and robust premolar teeth, as well as the 

 color pattern, it is placed in a special subgenus with these, 

 Putorius, sometimes regarded as a distinct genus. The Ameri- 

 can representative, however, has only the feet and facial mask 

 and the end of the tail blackish ; the upper parts are elsewhere 

 creamy, with a wash of brown over the back, the lower surfaces 

 whitish. An adult male is about 20.5 inches (529 mm.) long; 

 the tail relatively short, about 5 inches (130 mm.) (Osgood). 



The black-footed ferret is an animal of the interior plains of 

 North America, east of the Rocky Mountain foothills, from 

 western North Dakota to northern Montana and Alberta (?) 

 and thence southward to Texas and central New Mexico. Its 

 range is practically coextensive with that of the prairie-dogs, 

 in the colonies of which it lives and upon which it preys. Its 

 relations with these little burrowers is thus a close one and is 

 like that obtaining in Mongolia between its relative the black- 



