M 
LEWIS’S MARMOT. 
species of Harlan is the following : Lewis and Clark (Expedition, vol. ii. 
p. 178) describe an animal from the plains of the Columbia under the name 
of burrowing squirrel. No specimen was brought. Harlan and Rafi- 
nesque in quick succession applied their several names to the species, the 
former styling it Arctomys brachyura and the latter Anisonyx brachyura. 
When the present specimen was received at the Museum, the name- of 
A. brachyura was given to it, with a doubt. On turning to Lewis and 
Clark’s descriptions, the only guides which any naturalists possess in 
reference to the species, we find that they refer to an animal whose whole 
contour resembles that of the squirrel, the thumbs being remarkably short 
and equipped with blunt nails, and the hair of the tail thickly inserted on 
the sides only, which gives it a flat appearance, whereas the animal 0 *“ 
this article does not resemble a squirrel in its whole contour ; its thumbs, 
instead of being remarkably short and equipped with blunt nails, have long 
nails nearly the length of those on the other toes, and the tail, instead of 
being flat with the hairs inserted on the sides, is quite round. It differs 
also so widely in several other particulars that we deem it unnecessary to 
institute a more minute comparison. We have little doubt that Lewis and 
Clark, who, although not scientific naturalists, had a remarkably correct 
knowledge of animals, and described them with great accuracy, had, in 
their account of the burrowing squirrel, reference to some species of 
spermophile — probably Spermophilus Townsendii, described in this volume — 
which certainly answers the description referred to much nearer than the 
species of this article. 
