PRELIMINARY LIST OF THE MAMMALS OF NLW YORK 



343 



Mr Savage reports it not uncommon in Erie co. 



" The red fox is plentiful in most sections of Long Island east of the 

 township of Oyster bay " (Helme). 



Canis occidentalis (Richardson) Timber wolf 

 1829 Canis lupus occide7italis Richardson, Fauna Boreali- Americana. 

 1:60. 



1842 Canis lupus De Kay, Zoology of New York, Mammalia, p. 42. 

 1882 Canis lupus Merriam, Linn. soc. New York. Trans. 1 : 42. 

 1898 Canis nubilis M earns, U. S. Nat. mus. Proc. 21 : 360. 

 1898 Canis occidentalis Bangs, American naturalist. July 1898. 32 : 505. 



Type locality. Northern North America. 



Faunal position. This animal is so imperfectly known that it is impos- 

 sible to assign it a definite faunal position. 

 Habitat. Forests. 



Distribution in New York. While the wolf formerly ranged through- 

 out the state it is now exterminated everywhere except in the wildest 

 parts of the Adirondacks. 



Principal records. De Kay: "In some of the southern counties, where 

 they were formerly so numerous as to require legislative enactments, they 

 are now nearly extirpated . . . They are still found in the mountainous 

 and wooded parts of the state and we believe are most numerous in St 

 Lawrence and the adjacent counties" ('42, p. 43). 



Merriam : "Comparatively few wolves are now to be found in the 

 Adirondacks, though 12 years ago they were quite abundant and used 

 to hunt in packs of half a dozen or more ... In September 1870 

 I saw a pack of «wolves drive a deer into the head of Seventh lake, 

 Fulton chain ... In the year 1871 the state put a bounty on 

 their scalps, and it is a most singular coincidence that a great and 

 sudden decrease in their number took place at about that time. What 

 became of them is a great and to me inexplicable mystery, for it is 

 known that but few were killed" ('82, p. 42-43). 



Mearns: "It is generally believed that the last wolf disappeared from 

 the Catskills along with the deer many years ago though one man 

 expressed the belief that some still remain " ('98, p. 360). 



In 1823 Pierce found the wolf still common in the Catskills. He believed 

 that there were " two varieties, . . . one called the deer wolf from his 

 habit of pursuing deer for which his light grey hound form adapts him. The 

 other of a more clumsy figure with short legs and large body more fre- 

 quently depredates upon flocks under the protection of man " ('23, p. 93). 



