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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Microtus pinetorum scalopsoides (Audubon and Bachman) 

 Northern pine mouse 



1841 Arvicola scalopsoides Audubon and Bachman, Acad. nat. sci. Phila- 

 delphia. Proc. 1 : 97. 



185 1 Arvicola pinetorum Audubon and Bachman, Quadr. N. Am. 

 2 : 216. 



1885 Arvicola pinetorum Merriam, American naturalist. 19 : 895. 

 1896 Microtus pinetorum Fisher, The Observer. May 1896. 7: 198. 

 1896 Microtus pinetorum scalopsoides Batchelder, Boston soc. nat. hist. 

 Proc. Oct. 1896. 27 : 187. 



Type locality. Long Island. 



Faunal position. Upper austral zone, and irregularly parts of transi- 

 tion zone. 



Habitat. Light dry soil in woods, thickets and fields. 



Distribution i?i New York. The pine mouse is abundant on Long 

 Island and in the lower Hudson valley. Beyond this general region I 

 know of but two positive records of its occurrence, at Locust Grove, 

 Lewis co. and at Peterboro, Madison co. 



Principal records. Audubon and Bachman : " This species, of which 

 we have obtained many specimens from Long Island, and which is not 

 rare in the vicinity of New York, is very distinct from Wilson's meadow 

 mouse" ('41, p. 97). Merriam: "On the 13th of June, 1884 at my 

 home in Lewis county, New York, I caught a female pine mouse {Arvicola 

 pinetorum Le Conte). It was taken in a trap baited with beechnuts and 

 set for the red-backed wood mouse {Evotomys rutilus gapperi) at the 

 roots ot a maple in the border of a hardwood forest" ('85, p. 895). 

 Fisher, " Until the present year [1885] we have never detected the pine 

 mouse {Arvicola pinetorum) in this locality [Sing Sing]" ('85, p. 896). 

 " Tolerably common [at Sing Sing]. Its favorite resorts are the dry 

 grassy hillsides more or less grown up with small bushes and briers, and 

 old orchards containing weeds, matted grass, and young saplings" 

 ('96, p. 198). 



I have taken two specimens of the pine mouse at Peterboro, Madison 

 co. One of these was caught September 15, 1892 in a cyclone trap 

 set without bait in a labyrinth of short-tailed shrews' tunnels in the edge 

 of a grove of hard wood. The other, taken September 1, 1893, was se- 

 cured with a cyclone trap set in a woodchuck's burrow beneath the 

 roots of a large elm in a low, damp wood lot. I have never seen the 

 characteristic, mole-like tunnels of the pine mouse at Peterboro where 



