Available specimens were arranged according to geographic origin. These were segregated as to sex and then under each sex by age. Individual variation was next measured in each of several samples in which individuals were of like geographic origin, sex, age and season. Finally, comparable materials were arranged geographically for detection of variations of systematic worth. Following preliminary studies of material thus arranged, additional specimens were collected from critical areas.

When fully adult animals (see next paragraph) were segregated as to sex, and then measured, the degree of secondary sexual variation was found to be less than the degree of individual variation; therefore in the tables of indices, no distinction as to sex has been made.

The only external measurements of the animals used were those recorded by the collectors on the labels attached to the skins. These measurements were total length, length of tail and length of hind foot. Measurements of the ear have not been used since they were not in all instances recorded by collectors and since measurements of dry ears proved to be unsatisfactory. Only measurements of fully adult specimens have been used. The term fully adult is applied only to those specimens in which the auditory bulla is shiny and translucent, the permanent P4 is fully erupted and worn, and the tail is fully striped and penicillate. No one of these characters alone was accepted as proof of adulthood but only the three in combination.

The following measurements of the skull have been used in the tables:

Greatest length.—From the most anterior tip of the nasals to the most posterior projection of the auditory bullae.

Greatest breadth across bullae.—From the most lateral projection of the auditory bulla on one side to the corresponding position on the other bulla.

Breadth across maxillary arches.—Greatest breadth across arches in a plane perpendicular to the long axis of the skull.

Width of rostrum.—Width of the premaxillae and the nasals taken immediately anterior to the upper incisors (not greatest width of nasals which is attained farther anteriorly).

Length of nasals.—Maximum length of a nasal bone.

Least interorbital breadth.—Least width between the orbits immediately posterior to the lacrimal processes.

Basilar length.—From the anterior margin of the foramen magnum to the posterior border of the alveolus of one of the upper incisors.

Capitalized color terms are from Ridgway, "Color Standards and Color Nomenclature," Washington, D. C., 1912. Color determinations were made by comparing a masked area of pure color on the side of the animal with a masked rectangle of named color on Ridgway's plates in natural light always from the same angle.

Abbreviations used for specimens examined from the various collections are as follows:

This study is based on 3,732 specimens which were assembled at the Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, or studied at other institutions. For the loan of this material and for the opportunity afforded for its study, I am extremely grateful to the authorities of each of these institutions and to the owners of the private collections.

Acknowledgement is made to the Office of Research and Inventions of the United States Navy for assistance with the field work which permitted the acquisition of essential specimens from several of the critical geographic areas while the author was research assistant on a larger over-all project (N6 ori-164-T02) of which the determination of the geographic range of this rodent species, a potential host of tularemia, was one facet. Tularemia was not detected in this genus.

I extend my thanks also to Professor Stephen D. Durrant, of the University of Utah, for helpful corrections in the preparation of the manuscript; to Mrs. Virginia Cassell Unruh for the preparation of the drawings; to Professor E. Raymond Hall, of the University of Kansas, for guidance in the study and critical assistance with the manuscript; to Professors H. H. Lane and Worthie H. Horr for valued suggestions; to Mr. J. R. Alcorn for providing specimens for dissection when he was working under the University of Kansas endowment fund; and to the other friends and associates who have given of their time and criticism.