1924] Swarth: Birds and Mammals of the Skeena River Region 381

Columbia and California. In the skulls from British Columbia the
nasals are short and the zygomata are rather evenly bowed for their
whole length. The skulls from California have longer nasals, and
straight, angular zygomata. In the four skulls from California, a
straight edge (such as a rule) laid alongside the zygomatic areh will
touch the bone for distances of from 20 to 38 millimeters. In the
skulls from British Columbia the contact is from 10 to 15 millimeters.
There is not much individual variation among the specimens in each
series, the four skulls from California, on the one hand, and the three
from Nine-mile Mountain on the other. Poreupines from the coast of
southeastern Alaska have skulls that most nearly approach the British
Columbia type of structure. One from Telegraph Creek. upper
Stikine River, is closely similar to the specimens from Nine-mile
Mountain.

Marmota caligata oxytona Hollister. Robson Hoary Marmot

Abundant on Nine-mile Mountain, at timber line and _ higher.
Occupied burrows were mostly in the rock slides, but not invariably so.
Some were found on sunny slopes that were not especially rocky, one
or two in dense spruce woods (not far from openings), and a number
that were hidden in thickets of prostrate balsam above the limit of
upright timber. Young marmots, a quarter-grown or less, were seen
during the last week in July. Two such youngsters with their parent
were in view daily at the mouth of a burrow a stone’s throw from our
-camp.

Five marmots (nos. 32760-32764) were collected, three adult males
and two young females. Besides these I exarained eight or ten Indian
robes made of about thirty marmot skins each, all from animals killed
in the general vicinity of Hazelton. Skins from this region are dark
colored ventrally, compared with average caligata from the coast of
Alaska, and, in the five specimens from Nine-mile Mountain, there is
almost complete elimination of the white mark found between the eyes
in caligata. Otherwise, marmots from the Hazelton region are not
markedly different from caligata in coloration. The skulls of the
specimens from Nine-mile Mountain show the elongation attributed to
oxytona (Hollister, 1912a, p. 1; Howell, 1915, p. 63), as compared
with the broader skull of caligata. Thus marmots from the Hazelton
region appear to be intermediate between caligata and oxytona, much
like the former in general coloration, like the latter in skull characters.