Jl- 



p. 



l 



I 



ii: 



V 1 '■■ 



190 



MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN RODENTIA. 



r 1 ' 



i 





information respecting Riclinrdson's types, now in the British museum. 

 The ease appears to stand thus: — 



Richardson says (F. B.-A. i. p. ) that " five species are common in the 

 Hudson's Bay rep;ions, exclusive of the lemmings". These, ticcording to his 

 views, are (1) " ri2)arius Ord''; (2) " xanthognathus heach"; (S) " pennsylva- 

 nicus Ord"; (4) " novcboracensis Raf."; and (5) " borealis Rich." Now tliere 

 is no reasonable doubt that all five of these "common" species are repre- 

 sented in our immense series ; but the difficulty is twofold. In the first 

 place, it is to the last degree improbable that there are five species at all. 

 Richardson's four lemmings have to be reduced to two, and tiiere is no ques- 

 tion that the grade of cliaracters he sometimes employed to distinguish supposed 

 species are utterly fiillacious. Next, whatever the true number may be, we 

 cannot make out, from Richardson's descriptions, which is which. This may 

 seem strange, sceii^g the apparent minute detail of Richardson's descriptions ; 

 but, when we con e to sift out his accounts, we find that three-fourths of all 

 he says is generic (even ordinal) in character, and consequently pointless. 

 Audubon's and Bachman's accounts are still more faulty in this respect; 

 these gentlemen knew nothing about the animals they described except what 

 they got from the Fauna Boreali-Americana. We will first expose the futility 

 of what seem to be two strong points in these authors' accounts : — 



Respecting his "riparius Ord" (afterward " richardsonii A. & B.''), 

 Richardson says that the "incisors are twice the size of those of A. xanthog- 

 nuthus, although the latter is A\e larger animal of the two". And regarding 

 his " borealis ", Richardson says ; — " It is distinguished by the form of the 

 thuinb-nail" * * &c. Now, after examining hundreds of Arctic ^mco/a;, 

 we have seen nothing of the sort in the matter of the incisors or of the nail, and 

 must conclude that either we have not gut hold of Richardson's animals, or 

 else that there is some mistake about the alleged characters. The former 

 ■snppo.sition is untenable, for we have plenty of skins that show exactly all 

 the other ascribed characters of " riparius " and "borealis''. We therefore 

 ignore these points altogether. 



The ^^noveboracensis ? Raf." of Richardson (afterward drummondii A, & 

 B.) seems to be different from the rest, and perhaps does not belong to the 

 riparius section at all Professor Baird surmised that it might be aPedomifs, 

 and we once rather inclined to the same opinion. It is described as having 

 the "ears slightly overtopping the fur"; the "ventral aspect yellowieh-gray'' 



