24 WOOD-CHUCK OR GROUND-HOG 



have fallen into the common error. Dr. Richardson, who appears not to 

 have known the A. monax, also described it under the name of A. empetra, 

 and gave a figure of it. We have, however, been unable to discover any 

 specific differences between the specimens now before us and the one so 

 accurately described and figured by him in the Fauna-boreali- Americana. 

 We are, therefore, compelled to consider them all as identical. 



The great varieties of colour to be observed in different specimens of this 

 Marmot, together with the circumstance that no two of them are of the 

 same size, have tended no doubt to confuse those who have described it. 

 We have seen them of all colours, from black to brown, and from rufous 

 to bluish-gray, although they are most frequently of the colour repre- 

 sented in the plate. We have received a specimen from an eminent 

 British naturalist as A. empetra, obtained from Hudson's Bay, which does 

 not differ from the present species, and which instead of being eleven in- 

 ches in length, the size given to A. empetra measures fifteen. As Richard- 

 eon's species, moreover, was also from seventeen to twenty inches in 

 length, and as we compared his specimen, (now in the museum of the 

 Zoological Society of London,) with several specimens of the Maryland 

 Marmot, without observing the least specific difference between them, 

 we consider it necessary to strike off" the Canada Marmot, or Arctomys em- 

 petra, from the North American Fauna. 



From the short and very unsatisfactory description, and the wretched 

 figure of the Bahama Coney, contained in Catesby, vol. ii., p. 79, plate 

 79, it is very difficult to decide either on the species or genus which he 

 intended to describe. As however nearly all our writers on natural 

 history have quoted his Bahama Coney as referring to the Maryland 

 Marmot, we have carefully compared his descriptions and figure with 

 this species, and have arrived at the conclusion that Catesby described 

 and figured one of the species of jutia, {Capromys Foumieri, Desm.,) and 

 that his Cuniculus Bahamiensis has been therefore erroneously quoted as 

 a synonyme of A. monax. 



