MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 1 65 



1823. Gulo luscus Sabine, Franklin's Narrative, Journal to Polar Sea, p. 650. 



Type locality. — Hudson Bay. 



Faunal distribution. — Arctic, Hudsonian and Canadian Zones ; Atlantic to 

 Pacific Oceans ; South to Pennsylvania and Colorado. 



Distribution in Pa. and N.J. — Never found in N. J. A rare (the rarest) 

 animal in Pa. in the early half of the 19th century. Even then only found in 

 the most boreal localities of the state as a straggler. 



Records in Pa. — Potter Co. — " C. C. Burdette, hunter, told me of the kill- 

 ing of one on Pine Creek many years ago. One was caught in a wolf trap 

 near Great Salt Lick, Portage township. I think Joseph Nelson, of Wharton 

 township, caught it. I saw it, but no one knew what it was, nor ever saw 

 another like it. This occurred about 1858." — Austin, 1900. "Uncle J. P. 

 Nelson killed a wolverene in Potter Co. on the east fork of the Sinnemahon- 

 ing in 1863." — Seth Nelson, 1898. These two records, coming to me from 

 entirely independent sources, and from hunters of so much intelligence, indi- 

 cate that one and the same individual is referred to. The disparity in dates, 

 of 5 years, is not surprising when memory alone furnishes record of an event 

 happening half a century previously. So great and long continued has been 

 my friend Austin's experience as an original settler, hunter, naturalist, justice 

 of the peace and historian m Potter Co., I feel no hesitation in accepting 

 this record. It is attested by the aged brother of the man who killed the 

 animal, namely, Seth Iredale Nelson, another pioneer in the settlement of 

 the Sinnemahoning, still living at Round Island, and whom I know by ac- 

 quaintance to be a man of great intelligence and experience as a hunter, and 

 a man of strictest truth. These remarks are made because it is the only 

 record known to me of the existence of the wolverene in Pa., made by living 

 witnesses to the fact. Up to the present time northern New York was con- 

 sidered their most southern range in the Middle States, no records of it even 

 there being dated later than the one from Rensselaer Co. secured by Audubon 

 and Bachman in 181 1. It has been long considered extinct in the Adiron- 

 dacks. So distinctly marked, large and peculiarly shaped an animal as the 

 wolverene would not only be recognized as a novelty by any Pa. trapper or 

 woodman, but would be identified quickly in any community of average 

 intelligence, much more by the fur dealers with whom they traded. The 

 only other record of this animal in Pa. that I have discovered is in Stokley's 

 " Observations on Mercer Co., Pa.," published in the Memoirs of the Penna. 

 Historical Society, 1846, vol. 4, p. 77. In this he enumerates the animals of 

 the county, then covering a much larger and more mountainous area than 

 now. He says that there were found still in the county at that date, " A very 

 few white hares and an animal called the wolverene, supposed to be engen- 

 dered between a fox and a wild cat, never taken by white man and rarely by 

 Indians." I hope that these remarks may stir up the memory or unspoken 



