1922] Swarth: Birds and Mammals of the Stikine Region 161 



Of the available material, the Telegraph Creek skulls are most 

 nearly of the type of those from the Kenai Peninsula and Yakutat 

 Bay, Alaska. It may be that the name given to the black bear of the 

 Kenai region by Allen (1910, p. 115), Vrsus americanus perniger, 

 should also be applied to the bears of the Stikine section, but at present 

 it seems best to use the name americanus for the Stikine specimens. 

 A revision of the group is necessary to determine, among other things, 

 the applicability of the name Ursus americanus Pallas, and the char- 

 acters pertaining to the form to which that name should be subspeeifi- 

 cally restricted. In the present connection the main interest lies in 

 the apparent occurrence of two different forms of the black bear in 

 the Stikine region, americanus at the headwaters of the Tiver, and 

 pugnax in the coastal region near its mouth. 



Canis occidentalis Richardson. Timber "Wolf 

 "Wolves, from all accounts, occur in some numbers throughout the 

 interior of northern British Columbia, along the length of the Stikine 

 Valley, and along the adjoining Alaskan coast and on the nearby 

 islands. "We saw none, nor any fresh sign, until we reached Sergief 

 Island. There fresh wolf tracks were seen in the sand of the river 

 bank, and on several occasions, when shooting out on the marsh, the 

 reports of our guns started wolves howling in the forest nearby. On 

 August 20 two of the animals were seen, and investigation showed that 

 the place was the home of a wolf family, as it probably had been since 

 the young were born, two or three months earlier. The two we saw 

 were pups, not yet full grown, and they were probably awaiting the 

 parent's return from a foraging expedition. Certain areas in the 

 grass had been trampled flat, for beds, and a large flat rock nearby 

 furnished an ideal lounging place. This rock rose above the marsh 

 grass, and thus afforded an excellent observation station. Some cracks 

 in the granite gave foothold to two scrubby spruce trees, arching over 

 the rocky platform, and the rock below was covered with a deep layer 

 of spruce needles, affording a dry, soft bed. This shelter had been 

 occupied so much that the wolf smell clinging to it was apparent even 

 to the duller olfactories of a human being. Broad trails led away 

 through the grass over the marshes in various directions and into the 

 impenetrable fastnesses of the spruce woods on the adjoining hillside. 

 The trampled grass showed here and there bunches of feathers or a 

 few crushed bones of ducks and geese; water fowl were evidently a 

 staple food. 



