1734. =javonica= (_Mustela_) Seba, Locupletissimi Rerum naturalium Thesauri ..., 1:77, 78, pl. 48, fig. 4. The weasel to which this name was applied was said to have come from Java. Since no animal answering to the description has again been found in Java, and because specimens from Central America or possibly some from northern India, may do so, it is conceivable that Seba was the first to distinguish by name an American weasel from those in the Old World. My attempts to locate the specimen concerned in places where it might have been preserved along with some of the other specimens thought to have belonged to Seba have been fruitless. Since it is impossible positively to link Seba's description with any known weasel, no further use is made of the name _javonica_ in the present account. 1772. =erminea= (_Mustela_) Forster [= _Mustela erminea richardsonii_], Philos. Trans., London, 1772:373. Forster's use of the name is one of the earliest applications of it to American animals. The name dates from Linnaeus, Syst. Naturae, (10th ed.) 1:46, 1758, with type locality in Europe. In the subspecific sense the name applies to the ermine which occurs over most of the Scandinavian Peninsula, if Miller (1912:387) be followed in regarding the type locality as Upsala, Sweden. If, instead, Cabrera (1913A:394-396) be followed in regarding the type locality as in Switzerland, the name, in the subspecific sense, will apply to the ermine of continental Europe. As the earliest available name applied to the circumpolar species concerned, it is used now as the name of the species in the New World as well as in the Old World. From the time of Forster until approximately 1890 the name _erminea_ by many, but not by all, authors was applied to the American weasels in the belief that they were zoölogically indistinguishable from those in the Old World. From 1896 to 1943 the name was not used by American authors at all because the ermine of America was in 1896 treated nomenclaturally by Merriam as specifically distinct from the animal in the Old World. Since 1943 _erminea_ has been used in the specific sense for American animals in recognition of the circumpolar distribution of the species. Some of the early allocations of American specimens to _erminea_ probably resulted in a composite use of the name in that one or another subspecies of the American species _Mustela frenata_ may also have been included with individuals truly of the species _erminea_.