170 University of California Publications in Zoology [yoh. 24 



Neotoma cinerea saxamans Osgood. Northern Bushy-tailed "Wood Rat. 



Fourteen specimens collected at the following points in the upper 

 Stikine Valley : Telegraph Creek, six adults, two young ; Glenora, one 

 adult, four young; mountain above Doch-da-on Creek, one adult. 

 (Museum nos. 30706-30719.) At Telegraph Creek specimens were 

 taken in the talus at the base of certain rocky cliffs that rise back of. 

 the town. The rats were not numerous, and after one or two had been 

 caught at a place the traps usually remained undisturbed. The old 

 houses of the abandoned town of Glenora afforded shelter to the wood 

 rats,- but apparently not more than one or two families occupied any 

 one cabin. From several of the cabins the rats had well worn trails 

 leading into the surrounding thickets. There they cut quantities of 

 green vegetation, some to be carried into the houses and eaten at once, 

 some apparently to be dried for later use. Most of the old cabins had 

 the doors and windows boarded up, and in the gloom of the interior 

 the rats and mice were active all day. 



The cabins and warehouses with their miscellaneous contents, long 

 abandoned, formed a veritable wood rats' paradise, and they gave their 

 imagination full swing in the lines of nest building and the accumu- 

 lation of useless objects, for which their tribe is famous. In one place 

 a storeroom full of snowshoes had been entered, and of the contents 

 there was little but the wooden frames left. The leather thongs were 

 hanging in shreds. In an old barn, round masses of baling wire had 

 been filled out with horse manure and grass to form extraordinary 

 globular nests. 



The one specimen of Neolftyma from the vicinity of Doch-da-on 

 Creek was taken on the mountain side at an elevation of about 2000 

 feet. This was the farthest down stream that we found the species, 

 but I was told by a trapper that he had occasionally seen wood rats 

 near the mouth of the Iskut River, which empties into the Stikine a 

 little a,bove the British Columbia- Alaska boundary line. 



A young one taken, at Telegraph Creek on June 9 was about one- 

 third grown. Others were trapped at Glenora three weeks later, of 

 about the same size. Three adult females caught at Telegraph Creek 

 on June 9 contained embryos ; two had three each, one had four. 



