110 Fretp Museum or Natura. History — Zoérocy, Vot. XI. 
Type locality — Probably Lower Mississippi Valley. 
Distribution — Mississippi Valley from Louisiana north to South 
Dakota, southern Minnesota, central Wisconsin and southern 
Michigan, eastward to western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. 
Description — (Specimens from Fox Lake, Illinois, Oct. 31, 1906.) 
General color above pale tawny brown finely mixed with darker 
brown; tail mixed black and rufous brown, the ends of the hairs 
tawny rufous; ears rufous brown; under parts pale tawny; four 
cheek teeth (1 premolar and 3 molars) on each side of upper and 
lower jaws. 
Remarks — No description of any one specimen will answer for this 
species. The individual coloration is very variable, ranging from 
black, part black and part tawny, to various mixtures of yellow 
brown, rufous and tawny. The majority of specimens, however, 
appear to be tawny gray-brown above and pale rufous or yellow 
brown or pale orange brown on the under parts, with the hairs of the 
tail mixed black and tawny rufous. 
In any pelage its large size, tawny or rufous tipped hairs on tail, 
together with the presence of but four cheek teeth on each side of 
both jaws, will generally distinguish it from other Squirrels which 
occur within our limits. The Gray Squirrel, the only species with 
which it may be confounded, usually has 5 cheek teeth (2 premolars 
and 3 molars) on each side of the upper jaw, and the hairs on the 
tail are tipped with white. 
Measurements — The following are the average measurements of 12 
specimens: Total length, 21 in. (533.5 mm.); tail vertebra, 9.50 in. 
(248.2 mm.); hind foot, 2.80 in. (73 mm.). 
In early days the Fox Squirrel was common in many localities 
where it is now scarce, and few people at the present time have the 
opportunities for observing its habits that were accorded the earlier 
naturalists, therefore I can not do better than to quote Robert Kennicott 
concerning the habits of the species in Illinois. He says: ‘The fox- 
squirrel loves neither the low lands nor deep woods; and, though found 
living in the heavily timbered districts of Indiana and Illinois, it is less 
at home in these than in more open ground. It is properly an inhabitant 
of the timber of the prairie regions, and its favorite habitat is in the ‘oak 
openings’ of Wisconsin and Michigan, and the groves or edges of the 
belts of timber that skirt the streams watering the prairies of Illinois. 
me In the woods, the food of the fox-squirrel consists almost 
entirely of the nuts and seeds of trees, with the buds of some species 
including bass-wood, elm and maple. In autumn, it eats the fruit of 
various thorns (Crategus); various berries are also eaten by it, and it 
