University Studies 



Vol. XVIII JANUARY-APRIL, 1918 Nos. 1-2 



I. ON A NEV^ SUBSPECIES OF OTTER FROM 

 NEBRASKA^ 



BY MYRON HARMON SWENK 



Formerly otters were very common along all of our Nebraska 

 streams. In the winter of 1819-20 they were found frequently 

 on the Missouri river and tributary streams near Engineer Can- 

 tonment (north of Omaha), as reported by Edwin James, the 

 botanist and geologist of the Major S. H. Long Expedition. At 

 Fort Kearney, Nebraska, on July 5, 1856, W. S. Wood with 

 Lieut. F. T. Bryan's survey party obtained a young female otter 

 which is now Cat. No. 1877 (skin) and 2575 (skull) of the U. S. 

 National Museum. Otters were also extensively and persistently 

 trapped by the early trappers and Indians, and, due to this fact, 

 they became less and less common year by year until their local 

 extirpation along the streams in the more settled portions of the 

 state took place. However, as late as 1880 Aughey stated that 

 the otter occurred " more or less abundantly " on all of the Ne- 

 braska rivers. 



The last records of their common occurrence in eastern Ne- 

 braska are in the nineties. A poorly mounted adult with the 

 skull inaccessible, now in the University Museum, is said to have 

 been taken on the Missouri river in the early nineties, having 

 been sent in and mounted by F. J. Brezee. At about the same 

 time a local trapper secured an otter on Salt Creek at the crossing 

 of the Rock Island and Missouri Pacific tracks near Sprague, 

 about fifteen miles south of Lincoln, and a specimen was taken 

 on the Elkhorn river near West Point, according to Professor L. 



1 Publication No. 4 of the Nebraska State Biological Survey. 



