MAMMALIA, 159 
the winter. Their food appears to be entirely vegetable ; their pouches being 
generally observed to be filled, according to the season, with tender shoots of 
herbaceous plants, berries of the alpine arbutus, and of other trailing shrubs, or 
the seeds of bents, grasses, and leguminous plants. They produce about seven 
young at a time. 
The accompanying figure was drawn from a specimen procured on the banks 
of the Mackenzie. 
DESCRIPTION. 
_ Dentition the same as in the A. Richardsonii hereafter described. Forehead flat, straight ; 
nose short, thick, and very obtuse, projecting a little beyond the upper incisors, and covered 
with a close coat of very short, pale, yellowish-brown hairs. The face is clothed with short 
brownish-orange or reddish-brown hairs, mixed with a few coarser black ones. There are 
some short black whiskers on the upper lip, also a few black hairs over the eye and on the 
posterior part of the cheeks, none of them exceeding half the length of the head. The eyes 
are large and prominent. The ear consists merely of a low, much rounded, hairy flap, not 
above two or two and a half lines high, and situated above the auditory opening, which is 
large. The cheeks are of a paler red than the face, and in some specimens exhibit a con- 
siderable intermixture of gray. The cheek-pouches are pretty large, and open into the mouth 
immediately anterior to the grinders. The body, when the animal is fat, is thick, and flattish 
on the back, with a considerable breadth posteriorly. It is covered above with a dense coat 
of short soft fur, consisting of a fine down, which has a dark smoke-gray colour at the roots, 
pale French-gray in the middle, and yellowish-gray at the summits; and of longer hairs, of 
which the greater part are tipped with white, but many have lengthened black summits. The 
colours are so disposed as to produce a crowded assemblage of somewhat quadrangular white 
spots, margined and separated by black and yellowish-gray. The spots are nowhere well- 
defined, but they are most so on the posterior part of the back. On the upper aspect of the 
neck, and towards the sides, the white hairs, although numerous, do not produce spots. The 
throat, sides of the neck, outside of the shoulders, fore and hind legs, and the whole inferior 
aspect of the body have a colour intermediate, between brownish-red and brownish-orange, 
which is generally most intense on the sides of the neck, but varies in brightness with the 
season of the year. The hair on the belly and thighs is longer, and not so close as that of 
the back, and has less down intermixed with it. 
The fail is flat, and rounded at the tip; its hair, particularly that inserted on the sides, 
being capable of a distichous arrangement. In this state it presents on its upper surface a 
mixture of gray, brown, and black in the centre, then a black border, becoming much broader 
towards the tip of the tail; and, lastly, a narrow margin of soiled brownish-white. Under- 
neath it has an unmixed brownish-red colour to near the tip, where the black border and 
pale margin appear. The hairs of the tail become longer towards its extremity, and there 
