584 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXIV, 



variety I know little"; but of the Barren-ground Caribou (I.e., p. 242), that 

 it resorts "to the coast of the Arctic Sea, in summer," and retires "in winter 

 to the woods lying between the sixty-third and sixty-sixth degree of latitude." 

 He gives wood-cuts (/. c., p. 240), "made from drawings by Captain Back, 

 of the antlers of two old buck caribou, killed on the Barren Grounds in the 

 neighborhood of Fort Enterprise." Hence it is necessary to consider Fort 

 Enterprise, in the winter range of the Barren Ground Caribou, as the type 

 locality of this form. He says, however, that Captain Parry saw them on 

 Melville Peninsula, and further states that on the coast of Hudson Bay none 

 go to the southward of Churchill ; but, as said above; his personal acquaint- 

 ance with the animal relates to Fort Enterprise and to the country to the 

 eastward of the Coppermine River. 



V. NORTHWARD EXTENSION OF RANGE OF COYOTES. 



The Museum is indebted to Mr. Madison Grant, Secretary of the New 

 York Zoological Society, for a specimen skin and entire skeleton of a 

 Coyote killed near Whitehorse, on the Alsek River, Alaska, in February, 

 1907. This is by far the most northern record for any form of coyote. 



Mr. Grant informs me that in 1902 he found that coyotes were known 

 to occur near Golden, in eastern British Columbia, where the residents of the 

 vicinity reported their appearance as recent, and as still the subject of 

 comment. Previously the most northern record west of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains was "the arid interior of British Columbia (Ashcroft, Shuswap)." x 



East of the Rocky Mountains the former northern limit of distribution 

 of coyotes is the vicinity of the fifty-fifth parallel, 2 or about the northern 

 boundary of the Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Richardson 

 (/. c.) states that in his day the coyote, or prairie wolf, was very abundant 

 on the plains of the Saskatchewan, where, according to recent advices, it is 

 still numerous. 3 Mr. Ernest T. Set on informs me that he found, during 

 his trip to the Barren Grounds in 1907, that it was gradually extending its 

 range to the northward, and was now not uncommon as far north as Little 

 Slave Lake. 



As is well known, the coyotes of the northern plains (Canis latrans Say 

 and C. I. pallidus Merriam) are the largest members of the coyote group, 

 considerably exceeding in size the coyotes found in the region west of the 

 Rocky Mountains in the same latitudes. The Alaskan specimen received 



1 Merriam, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, XI, 1897, p. 25. 



2 Richardson, Fauna Bor.-Amer., I, 1829, p. 73. 



3 Early in the present year the Museum received 4 specimens, skins and skulls, collected 

 near Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, by E. E. Baynton. 



