'i S: 



tti#! 



U 



m 



?'i 



896 



MONOOUAPHS OF NORTH AMEKIOAN KODENTIA. 



though discredited by Say and every naturalist since hia time who has had 

 the opportunity of becoming personally familiar with the animal on its native 

 ])lains, is hardly less difficult to eradicate from tiie popular mind than the 

 idea that it is in reality a sort of small dog, as its common vernacular name 

 implies.* 



The habitat of the present species is confined to the dryer portion of 

 the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, where it is found from Western 

 Texas northward to the forty-ninth parallel. The eastern limit of its range 

 is near the ninety-eighth meridian. Specimens are in the collection from 

 Fort Chadbourne, the Staked Plains, and other localities in Western Texas, 

 and from near the Pecos River in Southeastern New Mexico. It ranges over 

 the western half of Kansas and thence westward in Colorado to the foot-hills 

 of the Rocky Mountains, beyond which I have been unable to trace it, it 

 being immediately replaced in the Parks to the westward by C columbianus. 

 In Wyoming, it ranges westward over the Laramie Plains, and even to the 

 sources of the North Platte. Further northward, it likewise appears to uni- 

 formly reach the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, beyond which the 

 species apparently does not extend. It is found, according to Dr. Hay- 

 den, as far down the Missouri as the mouth of the White River (in about 

 latitude 43° 40'), near which point it was first met with by Audubon in 

 his ascent of that river in 1843. It occurs thence northward and west- 

 ward over the plains of the Yellowstone and Missouri, but over large areas 

 of the more barren portions its settlements occur only at infrequent inter- 

 vals. At more favorable localities, they occupy the country continuously over 

 hundreds of square miles. It has bjen met with by both Dr. Suckley and 

 Dr. Coues on the Milk River. Respecting the northern limit of its range 

 Dr. Coues kindly adds the following: — 



" I have no personal knowledge of the Prairie-dog beyond 49°, the 

 northern boundary of Montana, and Richardson speaks of it as restricted 

 to the Missouri Basin. During my connection with the U. S. Northern 

 Boundary Commission, in 1873-'4, when I passed along the parallel of 49° 

 from the Red River of the North to the Rocky Mountains, I observed no 



• The lii^liost nbsiirdity of iiiiHrepreseutation \a nacbed in Hnniilton-Smith'a "origiiiul flguro", in 

 OrilHtU's Ouvlur's Animal Kin(;doni (v<d. iii, plale facing p. 198), drawn (it is paid) irom llio specimen 

 Ijrotigbt to I'biladulpbia by Lewis and C'lai lie. In Ibis tigurc in represented the mnzzle of a pus-nosed 

 dug, between the hulf-open lips of which are seen an uninterrupted row of teeth, rcseuibling those of a 

 caruivuroua animal I 



