428 CONTRIBUTIONS TO A REVISION OF THE 
skull and color characters of the south Florida animal. There is so much evidence of 
the intergradation of /ataxina both north and south that the specific separation of vaga 
from it is not permissible. On the other hand it is impossible to ignore the decided 
racial differences of the Carolinian otter from the Hudsonian type. 
Cuvier’s original description of /atawina gives “Caroline du Sud” as the locality 
where the type was taken ; it is, therefore, permissible to restrict this name to the Caro- 
linian form as typified in the otters found in the Carolinian lowlands of the eastern 
United States from south of the ‘“ Transition Zone” of Dr. C. Hart Merriam, as far 
as middle South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, where it merges into vaga of the 
Gulf or southern “ Austroriparian Realm ” of Dr. J. A. Allen. 
I know of no restricted synonyms of lataxina. Dr. Coues quotes in his Hur-bear- 
ing Animals a“ Latax lataxina Gray, Ann. Mag. N. H., 1, 1837, p. 119.” The work 
referred to contains no such name. Cuvier’s description of Jataxina gives its color as 
“dark blackish brown, a little paler beneath. Cheeks, temples, lips, chin and throat 
pale brownish gray, and under side of tail grayish brown, the hair tips reddish.” He 
compares the skull of datawina with his Lutra enudris, “ Loutre de Guiane ” of the pre- 
ceding page and remarks on the “straight line, even concave or depressed,” joining the 
nasals and occiput. This is significant, as one of the peculiarities separating vaga from 
lataxina and hudsonica is the convexity of the frontal plane in the former. 
Specimens Hxamined.—Connecticut, Liberty Hill, 1 skin with skull; Pennsylva- 
nia, Clinton county, 2 mounted specimens; Monroe county, 3 skulls; New Jersey, 
Tuckerton, 1 skull; Mickleton, 2 disarticulated skeletons ; Maryland, 2 fresh cased 
winter furs; North Carolina, Raleigh, 2 skulls. ; 
Fiorina Orrer. Lutra hudsonica vaga Bangs. 
Plate XXV; Fig. 2. 
Lutra hudsonica vaga Bangs, Proc. Bos. Soc. Nat. Hist., XX VIII, 1898, p. 224. 
Type Locality.—Micco, Brevard county, Florida. 
Geographic Distribution.—Florida, southeastern Georgia and the Gulf regions of 
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, intergrading (?) northwardly into dataxina. 
Color.—Dark ; less black than hudsonica, darker and redder than /atazina. Breast 
and belly nearly unicolor with back. Paler area of head and neck, scarcely reaching 
breast. Above and below, dark, rich chestnut, scarcely paler on belly. Lower head and 
anterior throat below line from nose to and behind ears, strongly tipped anteriorly with 
tawny Isabella color darkening to raw umber on throat, the underfur darker than over- 
fur, instead of lighter as in /atawina. 
