SCIURID^— TAMIAS STRIATDS. 



787 



to the American animal under americanus. In 1820, Kuhl described an 

 American specimen contained in Bullock's Museum as Tamias americana, 

 stating that it differed from the Sciurus striatus of Pallas preserved in the 

 Berlin Museum. He, however, makes no other reference to previous authors, 

 and does not inform us whether he considered his " T. americana" to be a 

 previously unknown species, or whether he intended merely to separate the 

 American from the Siberian animal ; but that he regarded it as a species previ- 

 ously unnoticed is the natural and usual inference. Fischer, in 1829, follow- 

 ing Gmelin, makes the American animal a variety of the Asiatic, for which 

 he adopts the name americanus {Sciurus striatus (Linn.) var. americanus), 

 and says of its distribution : — " Communis in America septentr. nee non in 

 Asia boreali." He quotes Linnseus's original diagnosis (" pallidus, striis 4 

 fuscis", etc.) in Mus. Ad. Frid., and cites Catesby, Lawson, Brickell, and Du 

 Pratz. Fischer also gives as an additional species the " Tamias americana^ 

 of Kuhl. In the same year (1829), Richardson applied the name lysteri to 

 the American animal, wrongly crediting the name to Klein, as had Desmarest 

 before him. This name is based on Ray's ** Sciurus a Cla. D. Lyster obser- 

 vatus", etc. The earliest use of the name Sciurus lysteri was doubtless made 

 by Pallas in 1778, who cites '^Sciurus Listeri Raj. Syn. p. 216 ". Desmarest, 

 in 1822, in his synonymy of Sciurus striatus, also cites "Sciurus Lysteri, 

 Rai, Syn. quad. pag. 216". The name lysteri was subsequently adopted for 

 the American species by Wagner, Schinz, Audubon and Bachman, Giebel, 

 Gray, and others, and almost uniformly accredited to Ray; while the name 

 striatus was applied by the same writers exclusively to the Asiatic animal. 

 Professor Baird, in 1857, claimed the name striatus for the Ground 

 Squirrel of Eastern North America, on the ground (as fully set forth in the 

 preceding remarks) that the name was originally applied exclusively to 

 American specimens. Finding, as he believed, the Asiatic species thus left 

 without a name, he called it " Tamias jiallasii, after the eminent naturalist 

 who was the first to give an account of it to the world''.* The name striatus 

 has since been currently adopted among American writers for the Striped 

 or Ground Squirrel of Eastern North America, while Dr. Gray adopts for it 

 Kuhl's name americana, and retains striatus for the Asiatic form. The use 

 of striatus by Linnaeus, in his tenth edition of the Systema Naturae, strictly 

 ami solely for the American species, is sufficient to fully establish it as 



* Mam. N. Amer. p. S96. 



