8 



NOETH AMERICAN FAUNA. 



[No. 40. 



later, 1823, more fully described by Say.^ This was doubtless the 

 first specimen of the prairie-dog to reach any museum, and Lewis 

 and Clark are probably entitled to the credit for the actual discovery 

 of the species. 



Rafinesque, in 1817, proposed the new genus Cynomys for the 

 '^barking squirrel" of Lewis and Clark, calling the species Cynomys 

 socialis. At the same time he provisionally named the ''petit chien" 

 of these authors Cynomys grisea, not knowing that it too was a bark- 

 ing squirrel." Warden, in his Historical Account of the United 

 States, 1819, named the species Monax missourietisis, basing his de- 

 scription on information obtained in the narratives of late explorers, 

 particularly Maj. Pike; and Harlan, 1825, based still another name, 

 Arctomys latrans, on the barking squirrel of Lewis and Clark. These 

 names have now been fixed in the synonymy of one species, but there 

 was considerable confusion regarding the nominal species and their 

 nomenclature up to the time of publication of Baird's Mammals of 

 North America, 1857. In this work two species of Cynomys were 

 recognized, one black- tailed and one white-tailed. Baird, who in 1855 

 had first described his Spermopliilus gunnisoni, a species of the white- 

 tailed group of prairie-dogs, from Colorado, still, in 1857, entertained 

 considerable doubt as to whether his new species was distinct from a 

 still more recently discovered white-tailed prairie-dog from Wyoming. 

 To this latter form he thought the older name Arctomys columbianus 

 of Ord, based on the ''burrowing squirrel" of Lewis and Clark, might 

 be applied, should further investigation establish its validity. 



The next authoritative work on the group was Allen's Monograph 

 of the Sciuridse, 1877. In this work, as in his previous list of Ameri- 

 can Sciurid9e,2 Dr. Allen recognized two species of prairie-dogs, the 

 ludovicianus of Ord and a white-tailed species to which he applied the 

 name Cynomys columhianus (Ord), treating gunnisoni of Baird as a 

 synonym. As later pointed out by Dr. Merriam,^ the name colum- 

 hianus really belongs to a spermophile of the genus Citellus, and 

 Baird's name gunnisoni is the earliest valid name for any member of 

 the group of white-tailed prairie-dogs. Dr. Merriam had been able 

 the previous year to substantiate Baird's suspicions of many years 

 before regarding the existence of two distinct species of white-tailed 

 prairie-dogs, and had named the Wyoming form Cynomys leucurus. 

 The same year Dr. Mearns described a southwestern form of the 

 ludovicianus type as Cynomys arizonensis, and in 1892 Merriam 

 added G. mexicanus to the list of known species of the genus. The 

 Sevier River valley white-tailed prairie-dog remained unknown, so 

 far as systematists were concerned, until it was described and named 

 by Dr. J. A. Allen in 1905. 



1 Long's Exped. Rocky Mts., I, pp. 451-452, 1823. s North Amer. Fauna No. 5, pp. 3&-42, 1891. 



2 Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., XVI, p. 294, 1874. 



