.895.] 537 
[Bangs. 
When he found that I placed a commercial vahie on the re- 
Miams, it acted as a stimuhis to his memory and he exhumed 
what was left of it and brought it to me. The skull was left 
in the skm and was nearly perfect. The animal was Rhoads's 
Pntorvas peninsidae. 
This confusion of the common names might mislead any inves- 
tigator who went on hearsay e\ddence, but Mr. Maynard clearly 
states that he saw a mink at Blue Springs, and that the animal 
was very common on the coast near Cedar Keys. While it 
would be interesting to see Florida mink, I have no doubt that 
they are the same as the Louisiana animal. I am very sorry 
not to be able to map out the northern range of P. vidgwagus 
and the southern range of P. vison and show what relation they 
bear to each other, but there seems to be a total lack of speci- 
mens from the necessary localities. 
I know that P. vison is common in the Alleghanies, as far 
south as Virginia and North Carolina, and there k a mink skin 
in the Museum of com])arative zoology at Cambridge, labeled 
- Salt marshes of Carolina." It is an old skin ^vith the skull 
inside, but it has every appearance of belonging to the species 
here described. Dr. Barton in Trans. Amer. philos. soc, vol. G, 
].. 70, 1809, gave the name Mustela winingus to an animal 
supposed to occur at St. Louis on the Mississippi River. He 
gave no description, and his name is a pure nometi nudum. It 
came about in this way. Dr. John Watkins, in a letter to Di-. 
IJarton, at the latter's request, sent him a list of mammals and 
trees occurring in that region, and in the Hst mentions " mink." 
Nothing more is said about the animal than this one word. 
When Dr. Barton published the letter he put an asterisk against 
the name "mink " and in the foot note says -Mustela wimngns 
iiiihi. B. S. B." Of course Dr. Barton's name, whatever the 
animal may have been, has no standing in nomenclature. 
Putorius vidgivagas seems to be an animal a little smaller 
than P. vison, from which it differs widely in cranial and dental 
characters and also in color. The eleven specimens of P. vtd- 
givagns are very uniform in color, the only difference being a 
trifling one in the shade of brown, and the usual variation in the 
amount of white on the under parts, a variation shown by any 
