the winter. Their food.! appears fo> be entirely vegetable;: their pouches being!
generally observed to be filled, according to’ the season* „ with tender shoots of
herbaceous plants, berries of the alpine arbutus, and* of other trailing shrubs, or
the seeds of bents, grasses, and leguminous plants. They produce about seven
young at a time.
The accompanying figure was drawn from a specimen procured-on the. banks
of the - Mackenzie.
D E S C R I P T IO N - .
‘ Dentition the same as in the A*. RihHardsonii[ Hereafter described. Forehead fiat, straight;
nose short', thick, and very dbfuse, projecting a littlJe beyond' the upper incisors, and covered
with a close coat of very short, pale, yellowish-brawn hairs. The face is clothed with short
brawnisb-o'range or reddish-brown hairs, mixed- with a few. coarser black ones. There are
some short-black wKiskerson the upper lip, alto a few black hairs over the eye and on the
posterior part o f the-cheeks-, none of them exceeding half the length of the head'. The. eyes
are large and prominent.. The ear consists merely of a low, much rounded; Hairy flap; not
above two or two and a half lines high, and situated above the auditory opening,, which is
large. The cheeks are of a paler red than the face, and in some specimens exhibit a considerable
intermixture of gray. The cheek-pouches are pretty large, and open into the mouth
immediately anterior to the grinders. The body, when the animal is fat, is thick, and flattish
on the back, with a considerable breadth posteriorly. It is covered above with a dense coat
of short soft fur, consisting of a fine down, which has a dark smoke-gray colour at the roots,
pale French-gray in the middle, and yellowish-gray at the summits; and of longer hairs, of
which the greater part are tipped with white, but many have lengthened black summits. The
colours are so disposed as to produce a crowded assemblage of somewhat quadrangular white
spots, margined and separated by black and yellowish-gray. The spots are nowhere well-
defined, but they are most so on the posterior part of the back. On the upper aspect of the
neck, and towards the sides, the white hairs, although numerous, do not produce spots. The
throat, sides of the neck, outside of the shoulders, fore and hind legs, and the whole inferior
aspect of the body have a colour intermediate, between brownish-red and brownish-orange,
which is generally most intense on the sides of the neck, but varies in brightness with the
season of the year. The hair on the belly and thighs is longer, and not so close as that of
the back, and has less down intermixed with it.
The tail is flat, and rounded at the tip ; its hair, particularly that inserted on the sides,
being capable of a distichous arrangement. In this state it presents on its upper surface a
mixture of gray, brown, and black in the centre, then a black border, becoming much broader
towards the tip of the tail; and, lastly, a narrow margin of soiled brownish-white. Underneath
it has an unmixed brownish-red colour to near the tip, where the black border and
pale margin appear. The hairs of the tail become longer towards its extremity, and there