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9)1 '■'■■ 



11 'II If 



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ii : 



928 



MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMKRICAN KODBNTIA. 



iiiulcr (lie head of A. caligatiis: — "There is a living animal of this species now 

 ill the Zoological Gardens. It was brought to England by Mr. King, Surgeon 

 to Captain Back's overland Expedition, and is figured and described in his 

 recent work under the appellation of Arctomys ochanaganus, derived from the 

 river upon whose banks it was caught. The Arctomys pruinosus of Pennant 

 is perhaps the same with caligatus, but the brief account of it in Arctic 

 Zoology is insufficient to determine." This specimen, as Audubon and B.ich- 

 nian inform us, is also tlie original of their Arctomys pruinosus, to which they 

 likewise refer the A. caligatus of Eschscholtz. 



Middendorff, in 1851, partly from a comparison of descriptions and fig- 

 ures and partly upon theoretical grounds, considered the large Marmot of 

 Kamtschatka as specifically identical with the A. pruinosus of Audubtm and 

 Bachman, both qf which (including also the A. einpetra of authors and the 

 A. melanopm of Kuhl) he considered as identical with A. monax. Hence he 

 strangely employs this name for the designation of the Kamtschatkan species, 

 previously named A. camtschatica by Brandt. At the same time, he was 

 inclined to regard the A. caligatus, owing mainly to differences of color, as dis- 

 tinct from the Kamtschatkan Marmot and from the A. monax of North America. 



Dr. Richardson, ap])arently on the authority of Harmon and the fur 

 traders, gave the range of A. pruinosus as extending from latitude 46° to 62° 

 in the Rocky Mountains. Pennant's specimen is said to have come from 

 Hudson's Bay, and there are specimens in the present collection from Wash- 

 ington Territory, Forts Good Hope, Liard, and Yukon, in the Mackenzie 

 River District, and from Fort Henry, Alaska. Ross gi\es its range as extend- 

 ing northward to the Arctic Circle. It hence probably ranges from the 

 Columbia River northward, west of tlie Rocky Mountains to the Barren 

 Grounds, thence eastward to Lake Athabasca, and possibly to Hudson's Ray. 

 All the specimens in the collection of the National Museum, however, from 

 the region about Hudson's Bay, belong to A. monax. 



Tablb CXXXIX. — Ueaimtmmtt of three fpecimoM 0/ Arctomys riiuiKOSUS. 



