Rocky Mountains. 487 



Oar small stock of bread was by this time so nearly ex- 

 hausted, that it was thought prudent to reserve the remain- 

 der as a last resort, in case of the failure of a supply of game, 

 or other accident. A quantity of parched maize, equal to a 

 gill per day, to each man, was daily distributed to each of the 

 three messes into which the party was divided. This was 

 thrown into the kettle where the bison meat was boiled, and 

 supplied the place of barley in the soup, always the first and 

 most important dish. Whenever game was plenty we had a 

 variety of excellent dishes, consisting of the choice parts of 

 the bison, the tongue, the hump ribs, the marrow bones, &c. 

 dressed in various ways. The hump ribs of the bison, which 

 many epicures prefer to any other part of the animal, are the 



of the zygomatic arch, is more obtusely rounded at tip than that of the 

 red fox. 



The dimensions of the cranium, as taken by the calipers: 



The entire length from the insertion of the superior incisores to the 

 tip of the occipital crest is rather more than four inches and three-tenths. 

 The least distance between the orbital cavities nine-tenths. Between the 

 tips of the orbital processes less than one inch and one-tenth. Between 

 the insertions of the lateral muscles, at the junction of the frontal and pa- 

 rietal bones, a half an inch. Greatest breadth of this space on the parie- 

 tal bones thirteeu-twentieths of an inch. 



The hair is fine, dense, and soft. The head above is fulvous, drawing 

 on ferruginous, intermixed with gray, the fur being of the first mentioned 

 colour, aud the hair whitish at base, then black, then gray, then brown. 

 The ridge of the nose is somewhat paler, and a more brownish dilated line 

 passes from the eye to near the nostrils, (as in the C. corsac). The mar- 

 gin of the upper lip is white; the orbits are gray; the ears behind are pa- 

 ler than the top of the head, intermixed with black hairs and the margin, 

 excepting at tip, white; the inner side is broadly margined with white 

 hairs; the space behind the ear is destitute of the intermixture of hairs; 

 the neck above has longer hairs, of which the black and gray portions are 

 more conspicuous; beneath the head pure white. 



The body is slender, and the tail rather long, cylindrical, and black. 



It runs with extraordinary swiftness, so much so, that when at full speed 

 its course has been, by the hunters, compared to the flight of a bird skim- 

 ming the surface of the earth. We had opportunities of seeiog it run 

 with the antelope, and appearances sanctioned the belief, that in fieetness 

 it even exceeded that extraordinary animal, famed for swiftness, and for 

 the singularity of its horns. Like the corsac of Asia it burrows in the 

 earth, in a country totally destitute of trees or bushes, and is not known 

 to dwell in forest districts. 



If Buffon's figure of the corsac is to be implicitly relied upon, our bur- 

 rowing fox must be considered as perfectly distinct, and anonymous; we 

 would, therefore, propose for it the name of velox. 



