182 
Specific Characters.—Length 5.50 to 8.50; tail vertebre 2.75 to 4.00; 
tail to end of hairs, 3,75 to 5.50. 
General form slender and musteline; ears small; tail with hairs 
usually more than ,half the length of body. Color above deep chestnut 
brown, varying with locality from pale reddish chestnut to nearly 
black, with seven nearly uninterrupted lines of yellowish-white, ex- 
tending from forehead to tail, and alternating with six longitudinal 
rows of sub-quadrate yellowish-white spots; .below yellowish-white 
varying to tawny, strongest on the sides; buttocks more ferrugineous ;. 
eye-ring yellowish-white; upper surface of muzzle gray, sides and front 
yellowish ; tail narrow, black above and below, varied somewhat with 
chestnut, and whitish-edged. 
The hairs are reddish-yellow at the base, crossed by a broad band of 
black and light-tipped. 
The above characters are intended to cover both the extreme western 
form, var. pallidus, and the eastern or Mississippi Valley form, var. tride- 
ceulineatus. The latter averages larger, above is deep chestnut brown, 
varying to almost black; it has the white lines rather narrow, about 
one-third the width of the interspaces; the sides are strongly yellowish, 
_ varying to yellowish-rufous. 
History and Habits.—This species was described in June, 1821, by Dr. 
Mitchell, from specimens taken on the Upper Mississippi, under the 
name of Sciurus tridecemlineatus, and by this specific name most American 
writers have designated it. Hight months later Sabine described it to 
the Royal Society of London as Arctomys hoadi. This appellation has 
been almost uniformly adopted by Huropean authors. Scarcely any two 
authors have used the same common name. 
In Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois it is universally called “gopher, 
being confounded with the true gopher, Geomys bursarius. 
This species, like the Gray Gopher, is decidedly a prairie animal. It 
is often met with in oak openings and sparsely wooded ridges, but never | 
in heavy timber ; its favorite habitation is on dry prairie knolls. 
It isfound singly, in pairs, and where the soil is dry and food abund- 
ant as many as forty or fifty may inhabit a single acre; each pair keeps 
- to its own burrow. 
Probably few Ohio farmers’ lads ever saw this species; it is described 
here, on the authority of Dr. Kirtland, Hood’s Marmot, being included 
in that list. It is not probable that so accurate and excellent a natur- 
alist as the lamented Professor Kirtland would be in error as to the 
occurrence of so positively marked an animal as the striped Spermophile, 
and I introduce it in this addenda without the least hesitation, only 
