162 University of California Publications in Zoology [Vol. 24 



There were apparently three pups and one adult in this family. 

 Two of the young were taken, and the old wolf then removed the 

 survivor, evidently to some distance ; no trace of the two was found 

 anywhere about the island. The parent had been seen several times 

 before the two young were caught. 



Mr. W. E. Parrott, living upon Sergief Island, gave us the skin 

 of an adult male wolf that he had shot on July 20. He was sitting 

 at breakfast when his cat rushed into the house for protection from the 

 wolf, which had chased the cat through the garden. Looking through 

 the window, he saw the wolf, leisurely retreating toward the beach, and 

 shot the animal. It was no new experience for the cat. Whenever his 

 owner went to town a ladder was left leaning against the house, as a 

 refuge in case of such pursuit, and apparently there was not infre- 

 quent occasion to use it. 



The wolf thus obtained may have been the male parent of the 

 family we encountered. In color this adult and the two pups are very 

 much alike. The adult is rather dark, though not so black as some 

 from this region. There is a good deal of black on the upperparts 

 from the eyes to the tip of the tail, produced by black tippings to long 

 hairs that are yellowish or reddish basally, the muzzle is reddish, the 

 legs decidedly reddish, and the underparts a somewhat paler brown. 

 It is not a gray appearing animal at all. The two pups are somewhat 

 duller colored, with the black not so intense, and the reddish areas 

 paler. In life, however, the young wolves looked quite dark. 



There is at hand an adult male wolf from Prince of Wales Island, 

 Alaska (south westward from Sergief Island), that is almost entirely 

 black. Another specimen from the interior, the Yukon region, is also 

 black, so that evidently dark color alone can not be considered as dis- 

 tinguishing the wolves of either of these two regions. Two skulls of 

 fully adult wolves from Iskut Summit, sixty miles southeast of Tele- 

 graph Creek, do not present any obvious points of difference from the 

 above mentioned adult from Prince of Wales Island. The latter has 

 been recorded by the present writer (Swarth, 1911, p. 136) as Canis 

 pambasileus Elliot, in the belief that that name was applicable to a 

 coastal subspecies. The Prince of Wales specimen presents characters 

 of size and color such as are ascribed to pambasileus (Elliot, 1905, 

 p. 79). Whether or not the name pambasileus may properly be used 

 for a local race from the type locality, the Mt. McKinley region it 

 does not seem that any distinction can be made as between the wolf 



