VOL. X, PP. 145-167 DECEMBER 28, 1896 PROCEEDINGS BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON A REVIEW OF THE SQUIRRELS OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA. BY OUTRAM BANGS. The present paper is intended to review briefly all the squirrels of the genera Sciurus and Sciuropterus known to occur in North America east of the great plains. It is based principally on material in the collection of E. A. and 0. Bangs, but in addition to this my friends, Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Mr. Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., and Mr. Samuel N. Rhoads, have kindly lent me specimens from many localities of special interest. I have also, through the kindness of Mr. William Brewster, examined all the skins in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. The last important work on our squirrels was Dr. J. A. Allen's Monograph of the Sciuridse published in 1877. As in the light of more modem material some of the conclusions reached in that work must be changed and a few new forms added, it seems well to review the whole group, mapping out so far as possible the geographic distribution of each species and subspecies. While all our squirrels tend to break off very readily into geographic forms, the gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) presents the most remarkable case, since it is impossible to recognize less than five races of this most protean species. There is an immense range of individual color variation in some of the species, particularly in the fox squirrels. The north ern gray squirrel varies much and is so subject to melanism in certain localities that the black phase is commoner than the gray. In such localities all sorts of strangely colored partially 27 Bior-. See. WASH., VOL. X, 1896 (145)
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