RODENTIA-SC1URINAE-TAMIAS STRIATUS. 
295 
There are five quite distinct dorsal stripes of brownish black, larger than their yellowish white 
interspaces, the three central ones reaching to the root of the tail. The dark dorsal lines have 
no brown borders, but are immediately in contact with the light intermediate lines. 1 
After all the comparisons of the Tamias pallasii are to be made with Tamias 4— vittatus, if 
with any American species. It is not a little remarkable that the Siberian ground squirrel has, 
until very recently, been without a specific name. As long as the old and new world species 
were supposed to be the same, they bore in common the name of Linnaaus. A simple comparison 
of specimens, however, was sufficient to show the differences between them; and as the Siberian 
animal was assumed as the type, a new name was given to the American. The one first imposed 
was Tamias americana, of Kuhl, in 1820 ; the next was T.lysteri , of Richardson. This author 
quotes Ray as the authority of this name, but it is, in fact, his own—Ray only referring to the 
species as Sciurus a Clar. Bom. Lyster observatus. 
In reality, however, the name of Sciurus striatus was first based by Linnaeus upon an Ameri¬ 
can specimen in the museum of King Frederic Adolphus, of Sweden, and described in the cata¬ 
logue of his collection, where Linnaeus quotes Catesby’s figure, and makes no mention of any 
but an American animal. In the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae , however, he gives both 
America and Siberia as localities of the species. 
Finding the Siberian animal thus without a name, I have called it Tamias pallasii, 2 after the 
eminent naturalist who was the first to give an accurate account of it to the world. 
1 The following is Wagner’s comparison (not quite accurate) of the common European and American ground squirrels.— 
Suppl. Schreher, III, 233 : 
1. The American species is a little larger, while the tail is shorter ; head and body measuring 6 to 6J inches, the tail 
vertebras 3, and with the hairs, not quite 4 inches. The Siberian has the head and body inches long, the tail 4^j. 
2. In the Siberian species the color of the upper parts is a dirty ochre yellow; in the American, brownish rusty, with much 
gray intermixed on the back. 
3. The Siberian species has five longitudinal black stripes, with the yellow ground color, constituting four intermediate 
ones. The American has, likewise, the five longitudinal black stripes, but differently arranged; thus, there is one simple 
vertebral black stripe, and the two lateral on either side are considerably separated from the first mentioned, and so arranged 
as in fact only to constitute the border of a yellowish stripe which passes between them and runs out to a point at either 
end. This yellow stripe, however, is not formed by the ground color, as in the Siberian species, but by a different tint 
' altogether. The ground color is only visible between the vertebral line and the dark stripe nearest to it, and this again is 
not yellow but rusty brown, mixed with gray and yellowish. 
4. The central portion of the under surface of the tail, in the Siberian species, is pale clay yellow ; in the American, 
brownish rusty red ; in both species, however, with a black and a white hem. 
a Eleventh Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution. May, 1857, p. 55. 
