124 ZOOLOGY. 



Note.— Lewis and Clark speak so positively of the occurrence of a "barking squirrel" in 

 the plains of the Columbia, that we cannot entirely pass their statement by without notice. 

 According to Mr. Ord in Guthrie's Geography — "These animals form in large companies like 

 those on the Missouri, occupying with their burrows sometimes two hundred acres of land; the 

 burrows are separate, and each possesses, perhaps, ten or twelve of these inhabitants." 



Perhaps the species mentioned by them may have been, as Professor Baird suggests, the C. 

 gunnisonii, or it may have been the G. ludovicianus. If the latter, why did it not "bark," like 

 those on the Upper Missouri ? 



I have made several inquiries of individuals well acquainted with the interior of Oregon, but 

 have never met with any who have seen the animal, and I have not heard mention of the "dog 

 towns" spoken of by Lewis and Clark. Neither have I seen any indication of the existence of 

 the species during my own journey over nearly the same route as that pursued by those 

 travellers. 



May not these animals have formerly existed until some disease having occurred they became 

 exterminated ? Such an epidemic, according to Mr. Gibbs, broke out among the prairie hares 

 at Walla-Walla, nearly destroying the species in that vicinity. — S. 



ARCTOMYS FLAVIVENTER, Bach. 



Yello-w-footed nioi-mot, Western AVoodcUack. 



Baikd, Gen. Rep. , Mammals, 1857, 343. 



In May, 1855, I obtained at Fort Dalles a couple of specimens of the yellow-footed marmot. 

 One was an old female, the other a young individual about two-thirds grown. They were 

 brought to me alive by an Indian, who stated that he had caught them among the basaltic 

 rocks on the Washington Territory side of the Columbia, opposite Fort Dalles, and that in that 

 immediate vicinity they are not found on the south side of the river. 



From the appearance of the young individual I should judge that it had been littered about 

 the middle of February. I kept them alive for some days in a barrel. They were exceedingly 

 wild, and apparently untameably savage. Snarling and snapping whenever the lid of their 

 barrel was removed, at the same time uttering a very sharp shrill cry, which Mr. Nuttall would 

 have probably described as like chek, cJieh. The skin of the female is now preserved in the 

 Smithsonian collection ; it is much worn, many of the hairs having fallen out, as if she was then 

 changing her coat.- — S. 



While in the vicinity of the Straits of Juan du Fuca in 1855 I bought a quantity of skins 

 which appear to belong to an animal the western representative of the woodchuck of the Atlantic. 

 All the skins bought want heads and tails, having been sewed into robes. The fur, thick and 

 soft, is of a silvery gray on the back. Tail and belly reddish brown. Tail about five or six 

 inches long ; its hair quite coarse. — G. 



APLODONTIA LEPORINA, Rich. 



Sewellel ; the Show'tl of the Nisqually ludians. 



Baird, Gen.Bep., Mammals, 1857, 353. 

 Sr. Ch. — Size that of fiber zibdhims. Tail very short, color reddish brown. Male, length to base of tale, about 13 inches. 

 Tail vertebrae, 1.50. Penis osseous — knobbed at the extremity and obscurely bifurcated. Testes concealed, no scrotum apparent 

 externally. Female slightly smaller. Half-grown young of a brownish lead color. 



I noticed the burrows of the show'tl in 1853, at the top of the main Yakima Pass, in the 

 Cascade mountains, at an elevation of 3,500 feet, and again in 1854, at the Nahchess Pass in 



