Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Joseph R. Hauser and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Volume 9, No. 8, pp. 337-346, 1 fig. in text, 1 table August 15, 1956 Comments on the Taxonomic Status of Apodemus peninsulae, with Description of a New Subspecies from North China BY J. KNOX JONES, JR. UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE 1956 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PUBLICATIONS, MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Editors: E. Raymond Hall, Chairman, A. Byron Leonard, Robert W. Wilson Volume 9, No. 8, pp. 337-346, 1 fig. in text, 1 table Published August 15, 1956 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas PRINTED BY FERD VOILAND, JR., STATE PRINTER TOPEKA, KANSAS 1956 26-3854 Comments on the Taxonomic Status of Apodemus peninsulae, with Description of a New Subspecies from North China BY J. KNOX JONES, JR. In the past several years the United States National Museum has received a large number of mammals from central and southern Korea through the auspices of the Commission on Hemorrhagic Fever of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board. Among these Korean collections are more than a hundred specimens of a murine rodent originally described as "_Micromys speciosus peninsulae_" by Oldfield Thomas but currently placed in the genus _Apodemus_. In attempting to ascertain the specific relationships of this mouse I have examined, through the generosity of Dr. David H. Johnson, Acting Curator of Mammals, most of the other Oriental specimens of the subgenus _Sylvaemus_ in the U. S. National Museum and it is on this combined material that the following comments and description are based. Three general groups of the genus _Apodemus_ are presently known to occur on the mainland of northeast Asia. One is the distinctive _Apodemus agrarius_, lone representative of the subgenus _Apodemus_. The others, both in the subgenus _Sylvaemus_ and closely resembling each other, are represented by a small animal that is currently regarded as conspecific with _Apodemus sylvaticus_ and a larger animal of which the Korean mouse, _peninsulae_, is representative. The oldest trivial name applied to the large _Sylvaemus_ is _major_ of Radde, 1862, in the combination [_Mus sylvaticus_] vrt. _major_. This is, however, twice preoccupied (see Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, 1951:566). The next available name is _peninsulae_ of Thomas, 1907, which was applied to mice from central and southern Korea (type from Mun'gyong, 110 mi. SE Seoul, Korea), and was originally proposed as a subspecies of the insular Japanese species, _Apodemus speciosus_. G. M. Allen (1940:949), who recognized _peninsulae_ as a monotypic species, was the first investigator to make the important distinction that it was not conspecific with the Japanese _speciosus_, although Hollister (1913:1-2) and Miller (1914:89) had previously used the combination _Apodemus peninsulae_, evidently with the same thought in mind.