254 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



large northern form distinguished by its flatter, more depressed 

 nasal bones from other subspecies; it differs additionally from 

 the race hernandesii to the south by its more massive skull 

 with broader rostrum, wide anterior nares, and narrower 

 posterior nares. The race veraecrucis is the largest of the North 

 American races and has the nasals more arched. A tanned 

 skin of arizonensis measures in total length, 2,145 mm.; tail, 

 660; the skull has a condylobasal length of 237 mm. An adult 

 male of veraecrucis has a total length of 1,993 mm., the skull a 

 condylobasal length of 247 mm. (Nelson and Goldman, 1933). 

 The northeastern jaguar just reaches the southern border of 

 the United States in Texas but apparently has never been 

 known to be common, and by now it is doubtless nearly extir- 

 pated in this area. J. A. Allen in 1894 wrote that in Aransas 

 County, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, it was then already gone 

 from the region. He mentions a skin formerly owned by a 

 Captain Bailey that was killed in 1858 on Live Oak Peninsula, 

 but Attwater who contributed the note had heard of none 

 since in that region. The same collector, quoted by J. A. Allen 

 (1896), speaks of it as formerly present in Bexar County, 

 southern Texas, but adds that it was then (1896) "rare east of 

 the Nueces River, but still taken occasionally in the chaparral 

 thickets in the counties bordering the Rio Grande. " How far 

 to the eastward it may once have extended is uncertain. True, 

 in 1885, in his provisional list of the mammals of North and 

 Central America and the West India Islands, even stated that 

 it ranged from Louisiana to Patagonia, but the basis of the 

 Louisiana report is not given. Seton (1920) has called atten- 

 tion to an account of what seems to have been the jaguar in 

 an old book on "Rocky Mountain Life," by Rufus B. Sage, 

 who while encamped on Soublets Creek, headwaters of the 

 Platte within 30 or 40 miles of Longs Peak, Colo., mentions a 

 "strange looking animal" encountered by one of his party. 

 He believed it to have been "of the Leopard family" and adds 

 that they (meaning jaguars) "are not infrequently met in some 

 parts of the Cumanche country, and their skins furnish to the 

 natives a favorite material for arrow-cases. " If this refers to 

 the jaguar, as seems likely, it furnishes the most northeasterly 

 record. Possibly, however, the ocelot was the animal meant. 

 Bailey (1931) mentions a jaguar killed near Center City, Texas, 

 as lately as 1903. It was treed by some dogs and after being 



