276 



NATQEAL HISTOEY COLLECTIOls^S IN ALASELl. 



as a delicacy. When boiled these roots have much of the taste of a boiled unripe sweet iiotato, 

 aud are very pleasing to the palate after the long abstinence from fresh vegetables one necessarily 

 undergoes while living in the north. 



During the winters when the snow remains on the ground from fall until spring compara- 

 tively few mice come about the houses until spring, when they are always numerous there. At 

 intervals there comes a winter In which, during December or January, there is a thaw, and melts 

 off all the snow. The water then percolates into all their burrows and storehouses, and the suc- 

 ceeding severe cold freezes everything solid for the remainder of the winter. This leaves the little 

 fellows without shelter or store with which to meet the remaining cold months. They are then 

 eaten by foxes and other animals, and many are frozen, while scores of them swarm about the 

 trading-posts and native villages. 



Their skins are used by the native children to make blankets and clothing for dolls, and the 

 little boys make toy traps in which they snare them just as their fathers take larger animals. 



These mice are omnivorous, and when two or more are confined in the same box the stronger 

 usually kill aud partly devour the weaker ones the first night. 



The specimens of Arvicola from the vicinity of Saint Michaels were, as a rule, smaller and a 

 shade lighter colored than those from the Yukon region, and these peculiarities seemed to hold 

 good all along the coast of Bering Sea wherever I saw specimens. This difference was so marked 

 that I noted it in my field-book, and I am of the opinion that a careful comparison of specimens 

 ■will result in separating the meadow mouse of the barren coast region of Bering Sea and the Arctic 

 from that of the wooded interior and British America. 



In Mr. True's accompanying tabular arrangement of the specimens obtained by me he notes 

 this variation, and his "Series A" represents the Bering Sea form, while the "Series B and 0" 

 represent the common interior form, some of which are also found with the others along the coast; 

 but I did not see any examples of the small coast form from interior localities. 



Etotomys uuTiLtrs (Pallas). Eed-backed Mouse (Esk. Af'-tsUn-uli). 



Dr. Coues gives 3.33 inches as the average length of head aud body in a series of sixty-seven 



individuals of this species from Arctic regions. Sixteen skins in the collection under review give 



an average of 3.2 inches, which approximates very closely to the same. 



J The average length of tail-vertebrae in Dr. Coues's series was "hard upon 1.10 inches." In 



our series we determine it to be 1.05 inches. The largest skin has a length of 3.8 inches and the 



smallest of 2.8 inches. 



List of specimens. 



BiograpMcal notes. — This is the prettiest species of mouse found in the north, and is common 

 and widely distributed over nearly all of the Alaskan mainland. From the mouth of the Kusko- 

 quim north to Kotzebue Sound along the coast and throughout the interior it is everywhere nnnur- 

 ous, as is attested by the specimens obtained by me and by the numbers of their skins 1 saw 

 among the native children during my sledge journeys. 



