7j\vot>idm—z\vus hudsonius— general history. 



477 



ing both nortlicrn and southern limits uf its distribution. It inhabits the 

 greater part of British America and tlie United States, from Atlantic to 

 Pacific. The northernmost recorded locality I have noted is Great Slave 

 Lake, latitude 62° ; and the southernmost is Virginia, where I have myself 

 observed it. It was originally described from Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and 

 Canada, and appears to be particularly numerous in the last-named region and 

 northern half of the United States. Audubon surmises, with mucii reason, 

 that it exists south of Virginia, at least in mountainous regions; while there 

 is no doubt of its presence in elevated portions of Arizona and New Mexico, 

 which harbor such a truly boreal animal as Gulo luscus. We have found it 

 in Dakota, and it is known to occur on the Pacific coast, in Washington Ter- 

 ritory ; while the moist and comparatively warm climate of tiie wooded 

 region, thence northward, we may properly surmise, will carry its habitat far 

 into Alaska. Its dispersion will probably ultimately prove to be little, if any, 

 less extensive than that of Hesperomys leucopus ; although, as it is more 

 strictly a woodland animal, there are large treeless areas within its general 

 range where probably it does not exist. 



HISTORY OF THE SPECIES 



Tiie latter part of the last century gave us our earliest accounts of this 

 species, under various names, from three apparently separate and independent 

 sources, — Pennant, Davies, and Barton. Thomas Pennant is said to have first 

 described the animal under the name of the "Long-legged Mouse of Hud- 

 son's Bay", or some equivalent expression;* and' this became the basis o*" 

 the first technical appellation quoted. Dipus hudwriius, conferred by Pro- 

 fessor Zimmermann in 1780. Pennant erred in <ir.5uly id'intifvinj^ the ani- 

 mal sent from Hudson's Bay by Mr. Graham with the Mus longipes of Pallas, 

 or Dipus meridianus of Gmelin, an Asiatic quadruped. The same author had 

 also a "Labrador Rat", which is no other tlian the present species. J. Sabine 

 is currently accredited with the term Mus Inbradorius, derived from this 

 source ; but a Dipus lahradorius had before appeared, upon the same basis, 

 in Turton's English version of the Linn.-Gm. Systema Naturie (1806). 



About the year 1798, General Thomas Davies communicated to the Liu- 

 neean Society an account of an animal he called the ''Jumping Mouse of 

 Canada", which was published in the Transactionsf of that l'>dy for 1798, the 



* The rnforence is not at band as I wrltu. 



t An Aooonnt of the Jnniping Mouse of Caniula. Uy T. Uavitss. < Trana. Linn. Soc. !v, ITUti, pp. 

 166-167, pi. S, tffo lower flga. Named rHp»ii oanadimiii on p. 157. 



