■894-1 185 [Miller. 
bis it is much less extensive. The fringes on both front and liind 
feet are noticeably darker in S. albibarbisA 
With the small amount of western material at my disposal I 
cannot find any good cranial or dental characters to separate the 
two animals, the teeth of both agreeing essentially with Dobson's 
figure referred to above. 
4. Blarina talpoides (Gapper). 
Two specimens taken on Mount Washington and a third at 
Profile Lake. The Mount Washington individuals differ some- 
what from true B. talpoides, being slightly smaller and with ears 
smaller than in the latter. They may represent a distinct form, 
but the material at hand is insufficient to warrant any separation. 
Mr. Bolles found this shrew common at Chocorua. 
Through Dr. Merriam's kindness I have before me seven spec- 
imens of Blarina taken by the field agents of the U. S. depart- 
ment of agriculture at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and at Blair, 
Nebraska. These may be considered topo-types of Say's Sorex 
brevicaicdus, the type of which was collected at Engineer Canton- 
ments, near Council Bluffs. A careful comparison of these spec- 
imens with more than one hundred short-tailed shrews from the 
eastern United States, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario 
shows that they represent a distinct and easily recognizable form. 
The name brevicauda must be restricted to the western animal, 
while for the short-tailed shrew of the eastern states and adjoin- 
ing British Provinces we may use Gapper's name talpoides. The 
type of Sorex talpoides Gapper came from the region between 
Lake Simcoe and the county of York, Ontario, and, although I 
have seen no specimens that can fairly be regarded as topo-types, 
a shrew collected by Mr. A. C. Brooks at Mount Forest, Onta- 
rio, about sixty miles due west of the region in question, is per- 
fectly typical of the eastern animal. Although Baird more than 
thirty years ago recognized the distinctness of these two shrews, 
they have been confused by subsequent writers. 
' Since writing the above I have examined the entire series of skins of Neosorex — 
mostly from the Rocky Mountains — in the U. S. national museum. Many of these 
specimens were taken in midsummer and yet all are sharply bicolored, none in the 
least resembling S. albibarbis. Sorex albibarbis is, however, curiously like <S. {Ato- 
phyrax) bendirel in color, the chief difference between the two being that the latter is 
of a uniform shade throughout the ventral surface, with no indication of a whitish 
chin. 
