DESCRIPTION OF A NEW GENUS AND SPECIES 
OF THE SORECID/E. 
ATOPHYRAX BEN DIRII Me™. 
Bendire' s Shrew. 
By CLINTON HART MERRIAM, M. D. 
In a collection of mammals from Klamath Basin, Oregon, kindly 
presented to me by Captain Chas. E. Bendire, 1st Cavalry, U. S. A., 
is a Shrew of more than ordinary interest. Concerning its history 
Captain Bendire writes me : “ It was captured in one of my camps 
while I was constructing a telegraph line from Fort Klamath, 
Oregon, to Fort Bidwell, California. The exact locality was about 
a mile from Williamson’s River, and some eighteen miles south- 
east of Fort Klamath. The last of July or first of August comes 
within a day or two of the date. I had just returned from fishing 
when one of my men brought me the specimen, stating that it had 
been caught an hour before by one of the dogs. I was camped 
near a little spring on the edge of a wet meadow, along and 
amongst a grove of pine timber.” 
It is one of the largest of the Shrews, weighing about four times 
as much as Sorex Cooperi, and proves to be the type of a new genus. 
It presents, in some respects, a curious combination of the charac- 
ters of the Shrews hitherto described, together with certain 
peculiarities of its own which indicate a modification more extreme 
even than that met with in Ncosorex. I take pleasure in bestow- 
ing upon this interesting animal the name of the distinguished 
naturalist by whom it was secured — a name that must ever be 
associated with the natural history, not of Oregon alone, but of 
a number of our western States and Territories. 
In order to arrive at a clear conception of the peculiarities and 
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