﻿6 



NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA. 



[No. 10. 



Baird in 1857 divided the genus Blarina in two sections, according to 

 tlie number of teeth ; and Coues in 1877 recognized and named these 

 sections as subgenera : Blarina x)roper, with 32 teeth, and SoriciscuSj 

 with 30. The reduction is in the unicuspids, of which there are 5 in 

 Blarma j)roper, as in true Sorex, and only 4 in Soriciscus.^ The lost 

 tooth in the latter subgenus is the second premolar. So far as the 

 United States species go, the two groups are well defined, the first 

 comprising the larger species with massive, angular skulls, the second 

 the smaller species with relatively light, Sorex-like skulls. But in 

 the Mexican species these distinctions fail, the larger species having 

 large, angular skulls, closely resembling that of the northern Blarina 

 hrevicauda. 



The first Short-tailed Shrews known to have fallen under the eye of 

 a naturalist were two siiccimens secured by Mr. Say, naturalist of 

 Major Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains, at Engineer Canton- 

 ment in eastern I^ebraska, a few miles north of the present site of 

 Omaha. It is a singular coincidence that these two specimens became 

 the types of the largest and smallest species of the genus Blarina and 

 later, of the two subgenera into which the genus was split. They were 

 collected during the winter of 1 819-20, and were described by Mr. Say 

 in 1823, the larger as Sorex hrevicaiidns, the smaller as Sorex parvus.'^ 

 It would have been far better if no others had been described from the- 

 United States, for excepting the carolinensis of Bachman all the 

 other names since proposed fall as synonyms under one or the other of 

 Say's species. 



Specimens of the larger species {hrevicauda) from near Lake Simcoe, 

 Ontario, were described by Gapper in 1830, under the name Sorex tal- 

 poides,^ which name has been used by some writers in the same sense 

 as hrevicauda. Other specimens, from Kew Jersey, were described by 

 Bachman in 1837, under the name Sorex dekayi.^ The same year (1837) 

 Bachman described as new two additional species, carolinensis and cin- 

 ereuSy^ both from South Carolina. The latter is a very small animal 

 and proves to be the same as S. parvus of Say. This was suspected by 

 Bachman himself and also by Baird. Bachman's carolinensis is a well- 

 defined form, intermediate in size between hrevicauda and parva^ and 

 restricted to the Austroriparian zone. 



In 1857 Baird recognized hrevicauda of Say, talpoides of Gapper, caro- 

 linensis and cinereus of Bachman, and added three others, which he 

 named angusiiceps, exilipes, and herJandieri.^ B. angusticeps (from Bur- 

 lington, Yt.) is an abnormal individual of hrevicauda (skull small and 



iBut Soricisciis is antedated hj Crifpiotis Pomel (1848), ^vliicli was based on the 

 same type species (clnerea Bach. = parva Say). 



2Say, in Long's Exped. to the Rocky Mts., I, 1823, 164. 

 3 Gapper, Zool. Jour., V, 1830, 202, PI. VIII. 



''BachniaD, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., VII, Part II, 1837, 377-381. 



spjid, pp. 366-370 and 373-376. 



6 Baird, Mammals N. Am., 1857, 47-48, 51-54. 



