328 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



South Buffalo (January 6, 1898) an acquaintance of mine with two com- 

 panions secured 54 rats along the railroad embankments within the city 

 limits, and another person shot 18 in the same section." Of the musk- 

 rat on Long Island Mr Helme says, " It is common in all sections where 

 there are suitable ponds, swamps or streams. It occasionally is found in 

 the salt marshes.' 7 



Synaptomys cooperi Baird Bog lemming 



1858 Synaptomys cooperi Baird, Mam. N. Am. p. 558. 

 1896 Synaptomys cooperi Batchelder, Boston soc. nat. hist. Proc. 

 27:185. 



Type locality. Northern New Jersey? 



Faunal position. The bog lemming is probably a Canadian mammal, 

 but it occurs in cold situations throughout the transition zone and even 

 in the northern edge of the upper austral zone. 



Habitat. Cold bogs, either wooded or open. 



Distribution in New York. While Synaptomys cooperi probably occurs 

 in nearly every county of the state, it has as yet been taken in only two 

 localities, Beedes, Essex co. and Glenwood, Erie co. 



Principal records. Batchelder: "In the summer of 1895 I was sur- 

 prised to find this species in the Adirondack mountains at Beedes, Essex 

 co. N. Y. On August 16 I set 36 'cyclone' traps baited with rolled 

 oatmeal in some low ground, wooded chiefly with large yellow birches, 

 sugar maples and beeches, with more or less thin, tall undergrowth (chiefly 

 Acer spicatum Lam. and A.pennsylvanicum L.), and with many mossy rotten 

 logs and stumps scattered over it. A dozen of the traps were along the 

 edge of some wetter, almost swampy, ground where more of the larger 

 trees had been cut and there was a thick growth of small trees, chiefly 

 Acer spicatum. Two days later, August 18, I found an adult male Syn- 

 aptomys cooperi caught in a trap set at the foot of a large rotten stump in 

 the edge of the swampy ground. Three days later I caught an immature 

 female near by, also in the edge of the swampy ground, in a trap placed 

 under a rotten log. Two days after this I got still a third, another adult 

 male, this time in the open drier part of the woods 30 or 40 yards from 

 the wet ground " ('96a, p. 185). 



Mr Savage has sent me for examination the skin and skull ot a Syn- 

 aptomys cooperi that he shot at Glenwood, Erie co. December 31, 1897. 

 When killed the animal was running in a sleigh track in the woods. The 

 specimen is not fully mature but I have little hesitation in referring it to 

 this species. 



