NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 197 



County, Calif.; neomexicana, from San Andreas Range, Dona 

 Ana County, N. Mex., about 50 miles north of El Paso; 

 nevadensis, from Willow Creek Ranch, near Jungo, Humboldt 

 County, Nev.; tenuirostris, from Trinidad Valley, northwest 

 base of San Pedro Martir Mountains, Lower California, 

 Mexico; and zinseri, from San Antonio de Jaral, southeastern 

 Coahuila, Mexico. In a recent study of the group, Benson 

 (1938) shows that arizonensis is synonymous with the older- 

 described race arsipus, so that the number of recognized races 

 is now eight. This author writes that "kit foxes are now as a 

 rule few in number even in the areas which seem suitable to 

 them. They are so unsuspicious that they are easily trapped 

 and even more easily poisoned. Consequently, wherever 

 trappers are active, and especially wherever control campaigns 

 involving the use of poison have been carried out against 

 predatory animals on areas inhabited by kit foxes, the foxes 

 have been greatly reduced in number or entirely eliminated. 

 Unfortunately, there are few kit fox habitats in the United 

 States that escape visitation by these agencies." Benson 

 comments that the race mutica pf the San Joaquin Valley and 

 Walker Basin in California is a well-marked form, while the 

 race arsipus, ranging east of the Pacific slope drainage, though 

 also easily distinguishable, clearly extends into southern 

 Nevada and may have to include nevadensis as a synonym. 



The numbers of all these various races seem to be rapidly 

 decreasing, but the only one which is rather certainly now 

 extinct is the typical one, V. macrotis macrotis. This form 

 once ranged over parts of California in the "San Diegan sub- 

 faunal district, from Riverside County, northwest ... to 

 Los Angeles County" in the Lower Sonoran Life Zone. It 

 formerly occurred in the Allessandro, Perris, and San Jacinto 

 Valleys, westward along the plain at the southwest of the San 

 Gabriel Range to San Fernando Valley, where in the early 

 nineties local residents trapped them. The last one known to 

 have been taken in the San Jacinto Plain was trapped near 

 Moreno in 1903 (Grinnell, Dixon, and Linsdale, 1937). At the 

 present time the race mutica is still to be found in the San 

 Joaquin Valley of California, but the authors just quoted 

 indicate that its range has shrunk to about half of what it was 

 not so many years ago, so that it is now restricted to the driest 

 plains of the southern and western parts of the valley. 



