428 CONTRIBUTIONS TO A REVISION OF THE 



skull and color characters of the south Florida animal. There is so much evidence of 

 the intergradation of lataxina both north and south that the specific separation of vaga 

 from it is not permissible. On the other hand it is impossible to ignore the decided 

 racial differences of the Carolinian otter from the Hudsonian type. 



Cuvier's original description of lataxina gives " Caroline du Sud " as the locality 

 where the type was taken ; it is, therefore, permissible to restrict this name to the Caro- 

 linian form as typified in the otters found in the Carolinian lowlands of the eastern 

 United States from south of the " Transition Zone " of Dr. C. Hart Merriam, as far 

 as middle South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, where it merges into vaga of the 

 Gulf or sontbern " Austroriparian Realm " of Dr. J. A. Allen. 



I know of no restricted synonyms'of lataxina. Dr. Coues quotes in his Fur-bear- 

 ing Animals a " Latax lataxina. Gray, Ann. Mag. A. II, I, 1837, p. 119." The work 

 referred to contains no such name. Cuvier's description of lataxina gives its color as 

 " dark blackish brown, a little paler beneath. Cheeks, temples, lips, chin and throat 

 pale brownish gray, and under side of tail grayish brown, the hair tips reddish." He 

 compares the skull of lataxina with his Lutra enudris, " Loutre de Guianse " of the pre- 

 ceding page and remarks on the " straight line, even concave or depressed," joining the 

 nasals and occiput. This is significant, as one of the peculiarities separating vaga from 

 lataxina and hudsonica is the convexity of the frontal plane in the former. 



Specimens Examined. — Connecticut, Liberty Hill, 1 skin with skull ; Pennsylva- 

 nia, Clinton county, 2 mounted specimens ; Monroe county, 3 skulls ; New Jersey, 

 Tuckerton, 1 skull ; Mickleton, 2 disarticulated skeletons ; Maryland, 2 fresh cased 

 winter furs ; North Carolina, Raleigh, 2 skulls. 



Florida Otter. Lutra. hudsonica ruga Bangs. 



Plate XXV ; Fig. 2. 

 Lutra hudsonica ruga Pangs, Proc. Bos. Soc. Nat. Hist., XXVIII, 1898, p. 224. 



Type Localilg. — Micco, Brevard county, Florida. 



Geographic Distribution. — Florida, southeastern Georgia and the Gulf regions of 

 Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, intergrading (?) northwardly into lataxina. 



Color. — Dark ; less black than hudsonica, darker and redder than lataxina. Breast 

 and belly nearly unicolor with back. Paler area of head and neck, scarcely reaching 

 breast. Above and below, dark, rich chestnut, scarcely paler on belly. Lower head and 

 anterior throat below line from nose to and behind ears, strongly tipped anteriorly with 

 tawny Isabella color darkening to raw umber on throat, the underfur darker than over- 

 fur, instead of lighter as in lataxina. 



