1869.] 179 [Allen. 



species have been inserted upon the authority of other authors, 1 while 

 a few others are given from their known occurrence in nearly all the 

 adjoining States, though not to iny knowledge yet reported from this. 

 The whole number enumerated is forty eight, and probably but two or 

 three remain to be added to perfect the list of the indigenous mam- 

 mals of the State. Attention is also called to such others as are most 

 likely to occur. If three or four northern ones be found to reach the 

 northern parts of the State, the whole number, including the intro- 

 duced house rats and mice, may be increased to about fifty five or 

 fifty six, which is a number somewhat greater than is found in any of 

 the Atlantic States, excluding the marine species, the seals and 

 cetaceans. 



Through the kindness of Dr. C. A. White, the able Director of 

 the present Geological Survey of Iowa, — to whom, and to his excellent 

 assistant, Mr. Orestes H. St. John, I am greatly indebted for assist- 

 ance, — I was enabled to pass a considerable part of this time with 

 one of his exploring parties, and to traverse large portions of nine 

 counties. 2 These are situated a little to the southwest of the centre 

 of the State, and embrace an area nearly sixty miles square; and to 

 this region most of my special remarks refer. Large portions of this 

 tract were then in a nearly primitive condition, many of its broad 

 prairies being still undisturbed by the plow. Yet the hunter and the 

 " first settler " had passed over it and destroyed or driven aAvay many 

 of the larger mammals. But the recent presence of these animals here 

 was still fresh in the minds of the older settlers, many of whom had 

 witnessed and assisted in their rapid extirpation. 



Iowa being situated in a prairie region, it necessarily differs con- 

 siderably in the general character of its fauna, and especially in re- 

 spect to its mammalia, from that of the wooded portion of the United 

 States to the eastward, as all who have given attention to the geo- 

 graphical distribution of animals must be aware. Yet we do not in 

 this State fairly enter upon the so-called Middle Province of the con- 



1 The works to which I am chiefly indebted are the admirable volumes of Trofes- 

 sor Spencer F. Baird, on the Mammals of North America, Audubon and Bach- 

 man's " Quadrupeds of North America," the late Major Robert Kennicott's 

 papers on the Mammals of Northern Illinois (See Patent Office Reports, Agricul- 

 ture, for 185G and 1857, and Transactions of the Illinois State Agricultural Society, 

 Vol. I, 1853-1854, p. 580), and Dr. F. V. Hayden's valuable article on the " Geology 

 and Natural History of the Upper Missouri," published in the Transactions of the 

 American. Philosophical Society (Vol. xn, 2d series). 



9 Dallas, Guthrie, Boone, Greene, Carroll, Crawford, Sac, Calhoun and Audubon. 



