THE OSTEOLOGY OF VULPES MACROTIS. 

 By Dr. R. W. Shufeldt. 



As long ago as October, 1887, there was collected for me at Fort Mojave, 

 Arizona, U. S. A., the skeleton of one of the smaller foxes of the southwestern 

 part of the United States. It was from an adult male individual, and was taken 

 by Private Charles Ruby, of Company A, of the 9th U. S. Infantry, who, through 

 Professor S. F. Baird's assistance, had long collected material in the West for the 

 Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D. C. The specimen was sent to me when 

 I was serving at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, as post surgeon. Upon examination 

 the skeleton was found to lack but one patella, a tooth, the clavicles, part of the 

 hyoidean arch, and the os penis. It was labelled Vulpes velox. 



In April, 1900, this material was still in my private collection, and upon 

 looking into the subject, it seemed to me that the skeleton in none of the smaller 

 western foxes had ever been fully described. On Plate XXXIV, in Baird's Mam- 

 mals of North America, there are three views given of a skull of Vulpes velox 

 with two of the mandible. These are quite accurate, as they were carefully com- 

 pared by me with a good average skull of that species. Mivart gives the dental 

 formula of V. velox in his well-known work on the Canida?, and Professor Huxley 

 had a skull of this fox at hand at the time he wrote his valuable paper On the 

 Cranial and Dental Characters of the Canidce} As this species was known to Say, 

 and to Audubon and Bachman, it is very likely that reference has been made to it 

 many times since their day, but there seems to be no complete account of its skeleton 

 extant or of that of any of its near congeners or allies in the southwest. 



Very recently this skeleton was kindly examined for me by Mr. Gerrit S. 

 Miller, Jr., of the Department of Mammals of the United States National Museum, 

 and carefully compared with such material as was necessary representing the 

 osteology of the genus Vulpes in the collections of that institution. Mr. Miller 

 quickly made it clear that the skeleton in my possession had belonged to an indi- 

 vidual of the species known as Vulpes macrotis, a form closely allied to V. velox, 

 and not to the latter form, from which it was easily distinguished by a number of 

 very good characters, both osteological and otherwise. This well-known mamma- 

 logist was also good enough to loan me an example of the skull and mandible of 

 V. velox, belonging to the United States National Museum, for use in the Avay 

 of comparison in the present account. This skull was from a specimen collected 

 by the late Doctor Elliott Coues on the Souris River, Dakota, and was a male 



1 P. Z. S., April 6, 1880. 



