426 CONTRIBUTIONS TO A REVISION OF THE 



canadensis Schreber is a plate name published {fide Sherborn) in 1776, and is the ear- 

 liest applied to this otter. It would stand (A. O. U., Canon XLIII) were it not unques- 

 tionably applied and intended by Schreber merely as a geographic name without refer- 

 ence to its specific relations to " Mustela lutra Linn." For this reason alone it should be 

 discarded. Furthermore, the name Mustela canadensis was used by Schreber on a pre- 

 vious plate in the same volume (PL No. 126) in the sj)ecific sense for the fisher. This 

 plate was also {fide Sherborn) published in 1776, one year before the text, which was 

 published in 1777, and the bound volume of text and plates were dated 1778. In 1777, 

 Erxleben published a description of the fisher and named it Mustela pennantii, by which 

 name it has been since designated by authors generally. As this name is antedated by 

 the tenable plate-name Mustela canadensis of Schreber by one year, I adopt it as the 

 name of the fisher of Pennant from the northeastern United States. Erxleben pub- 

 lished in the same work a description of an animal which he named Mustela canadensis, 

 and which Baird and Coues have considered applicable to the mink, and the accept- 

 ance of the dates on the title-pages of Schreber's (1778) and Erxleben's (1777) works 

 would give priority to Erxleben's name and displace Mustela vison of Schreber. But 

 Sherborn's emendation of these dates makes M. canadensis of Erxleben for the mink 

 untenable, it being preoccupied by Schreber's plate-name M. canadensis for the fisher, 

 as stated above. Besides this fact, Dr. Merriam considers that Erxleben's description of 

 M. canadensis also applies to the fisher and the marten in such a way as to make it 

 untenable for any species. 



Returning to the search for a first name for the otter, we find Kerr's name, M. cana- 

 densis of 1792, to be unavailable because he placed it under the old genus Mustela. Next 

 in order appears to be the name hudsonica, which is accredited to Lacepede, in an article 

 on the Canadian otter in the first edition of the Xoun-tte Dictionaire d' Histoire Natur- 

 elles, which is signed " Desm." I have not examined this reference personally, but am 

 indebted to Dr. J. A. Allen for a transcript of these facts from the only known copy of 

 the work in America which appears to be available, belonging to the library of the 

 American Museum of Natural History. In agreement with my previous rendering of 

 manuscript names, and on the supposition that Desmarest was the real author and pub- 

 lisher of this name and description of hudsonica, I cite it as Lutra hudsonica (" Lace- 

 pede," Desmarest). I agree with Dr. Merriam that this name should stand for the otter 

 of eastern Canada. Frederick Cuvier seems to have been the first to place this animal 

 in the genus Lutra under the Lacepede-Desniarest name hudsonica in 1831. 



The Lataxina mollis of Gray and the Lutra destructor of Barnston are no doubt 

 synonyms of hudsonica. 



Specimens Examined. — Labrador, Okak, 1 skull ; Grand river, 1 skull ; New 



