261 



Geogrciph iced D'str 'b u Ho n. 



The dispersion of Zapus hudsonius in ]N"ortli America can at present be 

 given only in somewhat general terms, pending precise information 

 respecting both northern and sonthern limits of its distribntion. It in- 

 habits the greater part of British America and the United States, from 

 ocean to ocean. The northernmost recorded locality we have noted is 

 Great Slave Lake, latitude 62° ; and the southernmost is Virginia, 

 where we have ourselves observed it. It was originally described from 

 Hudson's Bay, Labrador, and Canada, and appears to be particularly 

 numerous in the last-named region and northern half of the United 

 States. Audubon surmises, with much reason, that it exists south of 

 Virginia, at least in mountainous regions ; while there is no doubt of its 

 presence in elevated portions of Arizona and Xew Mexico, which har- 

 bor such a truly boreal animal as Gulo luscus. We have found it in 

 Dakota, and it is known to exist on the Pacific coast, in Washington 

 Territory; while the moist and comparativeh' warm climate of the 

 wooded region, thence northward, we may properly surmise, will carry 

 its habitat far into Alaska. Its dispersion will probably ultimately 

 IDrove to be little, if any, less extensive than that of Hesperomys Jeucojnis ; 

 although, as it is more strictly a woodland animal, there are large tree- 

 less areas within its general range where probably it does not occur. 



History. 



The latter part of the last century gave us our early accounts of this 

 animal under four different names, from three distinct sources — Pennant, 

 Davies, and Barton. Thomas Pennant appears to have first described 

 it nnder the name of the "Long-legged Mouse of Hudson's Bay", whence 

 comes the first technical appellation Dipiis hudsonius, conferred by Zim- 

 mermann in 1780. Pennant also had a "Labrador Eat", the description 

 of which applies perfectly to the present species; and, furthermore, a 

 "Canada Jerboid Eat", failing to recognize the fact that all three were 

 the same. Pennant further erred in hastily identifying the animal sent 

 from Hudson's Bay by Mr. Graham with the Mus loncjipes of Pallas, or 

 Di2ms meridicmus of Gmelin, an Asiatic quadruped. Pennant's three 

 animals became the bases of as many technical names — hudsonius, lab- 

 radorius, and canadensis — the last of these at the hands of General 

 Davies, who, in 1797 or 1798, communicated to the Liuntean Society 

 "an account of- the Jumping Mouse of Canada {Bipus canadensisy\ 

 which was published in the Transactions of that body for 1798, as above 

 cited, accompanied by figures. General Davies gave a fair account of 

 the animal, which was copied into Dr. G. Shaw's General Zoology, with 

 the figures representing the creature in activity and repose. These cuts, 

 though now seeming very rude, are quite characteristic and unmistak- 

 able. Joseph Sabine is currently accredited with the authorship of the 

 term Mus lahradorius, based upon Pennant's Labrador Eat ; but a Bipus 

 lahradorius had already appeared in 180G in Turton's English version, 

 with compiled additions, of the Linu.-Gmeliuian Systema Naturae. 

 Meanwhile, the third independent source of information, following Pen- 

 nant and Davies, had appeared in 1799, when Prof. Benjamin S. Barton 

 gave "some account of an American species of Dipus or Jerboa", and 

 named the animal Bipus americamis in the Transactions of the American 

 Philosophical Society, as above cited. This seems to have been the ear- 

 liest reference to the animal as an inhabitant of the United States ; and 

 the name was given in ignorance of the earlier accounts from British 



