Comment by Ed. "La Grande Prairie," as the French settlers of St. Louis called it, began at Fourth Street of the present city.
[51] Bonhomme (Good Man) is the name of a creek, a township, and a post-office in St. Louis County, but has never been the name of a town. The post-office of Bonhomme is of comparatively recent origin, and even now contains but one store. The name as used in the text apparently applies collectively to the settlements along Bonhomme Creek.—Ed.
[52] Genus Pseudostoma.[53] Say.—Cheek-pouches exterior to the mouth; incisores naked, truncated; molares sixteen, destitute of radicles; crown simple, oval; anterior ones double.
Species, Pseudostoma bursaria.—Body sub-cylindrical, covered with reddish-brown hair, which is plumbeous at base; feet white, anterior nails elongated, posterior ones short, and concave beneath.
Mus bursarius, (Shaw, Trans. Lin. Soc. Lond. and Genl. Zoology.)—Body elongated, sub-cylindrical; hair reddish-brown, plumbeous at base; beneath rather paler; cheek-pouches capacious, covered with hair both within and without; vibrissæ numerous, slender, whitish; eyes black; ears hardly prominent; feet five-toed, white, anterior pair robust, with large, elongated, somewhat compressed nails, exposing the bone on the inner side, middle nail much longest, then the fourth, then the second, then the fifth, the first being very short; posterior feet slender, nails concave beneath, rounded at tip, the exterior one very small; tail short, hairy at base, nearly naked towards the tip.
This animal is congeneric with the Tucan of Hernandez, which Buffon erroneously considers the same as the Talpha rubra Americana of Seba, or Talpha rubra, Lin., an animal which is, however, entirely out of the question, and which, if we may be allowed to judge from Seba's figure, is so far from having any specific affinity with the bursarius, that it cannot now be regarded as co-ordinate with it.
The late professor B. S. Barton, in his Medical and Physical Journal, says, that a species of Mus allied to the M. bursarius of Shaw, is common in Georgia and Florida; that he examined a living specimen of this animal, and was convinced that it is no other than the Tucan of Hernandez, and the Tuza or Tozan of Clavigero. He says nothing of its size; but on the same page he remarks, "that another species of Mus, much larger [than] the Tuza, inhabits west of the Mississippi about latitude 30°, of which very little is known." Dr. Barton was aware that the cheek pouches, in the figures given by Shaw, are represented in an inverted position, but not having seen specimens from the trans-Mississippi country, he was unacquainted with their specific identity with those of Canada, from which those figures were drawn. In our zoological reports to Major Long, in the year 1819, the specimens which we found on the Missouri were recorded under the name of bursarius of Shaw. Coxe, in his description of "Carolana called Florida, and of the Meschacebe," 1741, mentions a "rat with a bag under its throat, wherein it conveys its young when forced to fly."
Several other writers have noticed these animals, of whom Dr. Mitchell, in Silliman's Journal, 1821, mentions the identity of specimens obtained beyond Lake Superior, with the M. bursarius of Shaw.
The animals belonging to this genus are distinguished by their voluminous cheek-pouches, which are perfectly exterior to the mouth, from which they are separated by the common integument, they are profoundly concave, opening downwards, and towards the mouth.
The incisores which are not covered by the lips, but are always exposed to view, are strong and truncated in their entire width at tip; the superior ones are each marked by a deep, longitudinal groove near the middle, and by a smaller one at the inner margin. The molares, to the number of eight in each jaw, penetrate to the base of their respective alveoles, without any division into roots, as in the genus Arvicola, Lepus, &c., their crown is simply discoidal, transversely oblong oval, margined by the enamel, and in general form they resemble the teeth of a Lepus, but without the appearance either of a groove at their ends, or of a dividing crest of enamel; the posterior tooth is rather more rounded than the others, and that of the upper-jaw has a small prominent angle on its posterior face; the anterior tooth is double, in consequence of a profound duplicature in its side, so that its crown presents two oval disks, of which the anterior one is smaller, and in the lower jaw somewhat angulated. All the molares of the lower jaw incline obliquely forward, and those of the superior jaw obliquely backward.