188 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
animal was a male, and was trapped, November 12, 1890, in a thick 
hedge on high, sandy land. 
Specimens of this species from the northern part of its habitat seem 
to differ enough from typical Microtus pinetorum (Le Conte) to 
make it advisable to restore Audubon and Bachman’s name of 
scalopsoicles as a subspecific designation for them. 
Microtus chrotorrhinus (Miller). Rock Vole. 
At Beede’s, Essex Co., New York, late in the summer of 1894, an 
attempt that I made to obtain some specimens of Evotomys led to 
the very unexpected discovery that Microtus chrotorrhinus was 
common there, at least in one particular locality. This place was a 
steep hillside heavily wooded with an old mixed growth. The lower 
slopes were made up of a talus of large, angular blocks of rock, piled 
one upon another as they had fallen from the cliffs above. The 
damp rocks were covered with sphagnum and ferns, and from the 
holes and spaces between them came currents of cold air, indicating 
the presence of masses of yet unmelted ice somewhere in the depths 
below. Here on August 29 I set thirty-six traps, baited with rolled 
oatmeal, about some of the rotten stumps and fallen tree trunks and 
near holes in the matted masses of roots and decaying leaves that 
formed the scanty soil of the steep slopes. I visited the traps daily, 
and in the course of five days obtained twelve individuals of this 
species. This was in spite of the fact that many of the traps were 
robbed, probably by chipmunks, and that there were also caught 
thirty-nine other small mammals representing six species. Thirty- 
seven traps set, September 5, in ground adjoining this and exactly 
similar to it, yielded the next day a total of fifteen small mammals 
of four species, eight of the fifteen being M. chrotorrhinus. 
In the meantime I trapped for two days at the foot of another 
talus in a narrow gorge about a mile away. Here the huge rocks 
gave little foothold for large trees, but the masses of ice beneath, of 
which glimpses could be had, here and there, in the caverns between 
the rocks, aided by the shade afforded by a wall of mountain, 
produced a temperature so low that spring flowers blossomed even 
in August among the deep beds of damp sphagnum that covered the 
rocks. One Microtus chrotorrhinus was taken, but only one. The 
relative scarcity of the species at this spot may have been due to a 
lack of food, for other small mammals were notably few here. 
