216 
RICE MEADOW-MOUSE. 
rice plantation in St. John’s parish, South Carolina. We procured a 
considerable number on the salt marshes near Charleston, saw several on 
the eastern banks of the Savannah river, and near Savannah ; and the late 
Dr. Leitner brought us a specimen obtained in the Everglades of Florida. 
This Arvicola is said to exist as far to the north as New Jersey. 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
We obtained specimens of Arvicola Oryzivora in the winter of 1816, but 
did not describe it until May 1836, when we designated it by the above 
name. Having occasion to send descriptions of several, then undescribed, 
species to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, we sent a 
specimen of this animal to Dr. Pickering, requesting him and Dr. Harlan 
to compare it with the Arvicola riparia of Ord, a species which we had 
not seen, stating our reasons why we regarded it as distinct. In searching 
in the Academy, a specimen of this species was found, and Dr. Harlan, 
in opposition to the views of Pickering, felt himself authorized to publish 
it in Silliman’s American Journal (vol. xxxi.), bestowing on it the name 
of Mus palustris , making use of the head of our specimen for an examina- 
tion of the teeth. 
The teeth and general appearance of this species, the form of its body, 
and especially its ears and tail being thickly clothed with hair, render it 
apparent that it does not belong to the genus Mus, but is more nearly allied 
to Arvicola. As the name “ Arvicola palustris ” is pre-occupied (Harlan’s 
Fauna, p. 136), we are favoured with an opportunity of extricating it from 
the confusion of synonymes in which it would otherwise be involved, and 
of restoring it to its true genus under the name given by its legitimate 
describer. 
In our large edition (plate 144) the third figure is lettered Mus riparius. 
We have since the publication of that plate ascertained that no such species 
as our so-called Mies riparius exists, and in consequence have stricken it 
out of the catalogue of North American mammalia, and have figured in 
place of it, in the octavo edition of our work (plate 144, fig. 3), Arvicola 
oryzivora, the subject of our present article. 
