著者

阿部,余四男

出版者

東京動物學會

雑誌

動物学雑誌

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48(8-10), 1936-10-15

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Mr.POCOCK attempted (P.Z.S. London, 1935, Part III) to include the Corean wolf together with all the other forms of wolves in Chinese Tartary, Thian Shan, Kashmir, Tibet, Mongolia and China proper in Canis lupus laniger HODGSON. And as the basis of including the Corean wolf in laniger, he says that the skull size and pelage colour of it in my despription may fall into the individual variations among laniger. I clearly stated that Canis lupus coreanus ABE has as large a skull as laniger, and that in the pelage colour there in not a little variation, so that I do not take such points as diagnosis; but that it is recognized by its slenderer snout in comparison with laniger or any other middle sized or large sized wolves. So Mr.POCOCK's protest is wide of the mark. I measured my materials anew and two more skulls in Mr.SAITO's collection (both formerly kept in Uyeno Zoological Garden alive) after POCOCK's method, and I find more clearly that all our materials agree in the slenderer snout in comparison with all the laniger specimens which he showed: Width outside pm^2 being 35, 39, 40, 42 in the former and 47, 481/2, 551/2, in the latter, palate between pm^2 being 29, 29, 28, 301/2 in the former and 33, 351/2, 37 in the latter, palate between pm^1 being 261/3, 28, 28, 29 in the former and 34, 32, 31 in the latter, etc., as the table shows. Thus the gap between C.l.laniger and C.l.coreanus far exceeds the gap between his so called C.l.rex and N.E.Siberian wolf. Sometimes north-eastern larger wolves may intrude into Corea over the frozen River Yalou, but such larger stragglers can neither be laniger nor nullify the existence of the peninsular form C.l.coreanus.