NOTES ON THE MAMMALS OF IOWA. 



THE present list of the mammals of Iowa is based mainly upon 

 notes gathered during three months spent in that State in the summer 

 of 1867, for the purpose of collecting and studying its animals and 

 plants. It seeming desirable to make the list a complete one, a few 

 species have been inserted upon the authority of other authors, 1 while 

 a few others are given from their known occurrence in nearly all the 

 adjoining States, though not to my knowledge yet reported from this. 

 The whole number enumerated is forty eight, and probably but two or 

 three remain to be added to perfect the list of the indigenous mam- 

 mals of the State. Attention is also called to such others as are most 

 likely to occur. If three or four northern ones be found to reach the 

 northern parts of the State, the whole number, including the intro- 

 duced house rats and mice, may be increased to about fifty five or 

 fifty six, which is a number somewhat greater than is found in any of 

 the Atlantic States, excluding the marine species, the seals and 

 cetaceans. 



Through the kindness of Dr. C. A. Whites, the able Director of 

 the present Geological Survey of Iowa, to whom, and to his excellent 



*The works to which I am chiefly indebted are the admirable volumes of Profes- 

 sor Spencer F. Baird, on the Mammals of North America, Audubon and Bach- 

 man's " Quadrupeds of North America," the late Major Robert Kennicott's 

 papers on the Mammals of Northern Illinois (See Patent Office Reports, Agricul- 

 ture, for 1856 and 1857, and Transactions of the Illinois State Agricultural Society, 

 Vol. i 1853-1854, p. 580), and Dr. F. V. Hayden's valuable article on the " Geology 

 and Natural History of the Upper Missouri," published in the Transactions of the 

 American Philosophical Society (Vol. xn, 2d series). 



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