T14 Former Range of New England Mammals. [ December, 
ing possibly a narrow belt along the seaboard), and even farther 
southward along the Alleghanies. None, however, now exist 
in the United States east of the Mississippi River, south of 
Northern New England and Northern New York, except at a 
few points in the Alleghanies. They were occasionally found 
in Western Massachusetts a generation since, but they probably 
rarely if ever occur there now. Being eagerly hunted for their 
furs they soon disappeared before the advancing settlements, and 
linger only in such wooded regions as are least frequented by 
man. The mink (Putorius vison) and the weasels (P. ermin- 
eus and P. vulgaris) are still generally distributed, but in all 
the more thickly-settled parts of New England they long since 
became comparatively infrequent, though still numerous in the 
northern forests. The otter (Lutra Canadensis) and the raccoon 
(Procyon lotor), both formerly abundant, are now everywhere 
rare in Southern New England, over large portions of which 
they have become quite extirpated. The wolverine (@ulo lus- 
cus), now rarely recognized as an animal that was eyer found in 
New England, seems to have been formerly of frequent occur- 
rence in the northern parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, and 
Maine, and probably once inhabited the highlands of Western 
Massachusetts. Samuel Williams, writing in 1794, cites it as 
an inhabitant of the “northern and uncultivated parts” of Ver- 
mont,! and Hanson says it was formerly found in Maine, while 
their accompanying descriptions of the animal leave no doubt of | 
the correctness of their identifications. 
The black bear (Ursus Americanus?) is well known to have 
been of very frequent occurrence throughout not only New En- 
gland, but the whole of Eastern North America. Still occasion- 
ally taken in the Green Mountains even as far south as Northern 
Connecticut, it is probably wholly extinct east of the Connecti- 
cut River south of the White Mountains. Though comparatively 
frequent in some portions of Northern New England, it is eve? 
there much more rare than formerly. : 
The polar bear ( Ursus maritimus) seems never to have quite 
1 Natural and Civil History of Vermont, page 87. 
-A recent reéxamination of the specific relationship of the North American bears, 
__ based on the large collection of skulls contained in the National Museum (see B alie 
tin of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, ii 
seems 
ee 
