intergradation has occurred the result often has been increased size of the lowland shrews, although they usually retain the reddish summer pelage rather than acquiring the more grayish pelage of _obscurus_. The name _dobsoni_ was based upon shrews from a place where lowland and highland forms occur almost together with only a slight amount of intergradation. Examples of "_dobsoni_" may not with certainty be distinguished from typical _vagrans_ except that they are, as Merriam (1895:68-69) points out, somewhat larger. Merriam (_loc. cit._) further notes that _dobsoni_ is "intermediate in size and cranial characters between _S. vagrans_ and _obscurus_;" a statement which hits very close to the heart of the matter. I consider the name _dobsoni_ to apply to intergrades. To attempt to apply the name to the highly variable populations of intergrades from British Columbia to southern Idaho seems inadvisable. I have examined the possibility of using the name _amoenus_ for the animals from this region. The characters which set _amoenus_ apart from _vagrans_, slightly shorter tail and slightly darker summer pelage, however, are not universally found in shrews from the Columbian Plateau and eastern Great Basin and furthermore these differences between _amoenus_ and _vagrans_ do not seem to me to be of great enough magnitude to warrant subspecific recognition of the former. Thus the name _S. v. vagrans_ may apply to shrews in the region under consideration. The subspecies, as thus thought of, embraces several incipient subspecies, namely (1) the populations on the isolated mountain ranges of Nevada, (2) the coastal rain forest population and possibly (3) the population on the Columbian Plateau. In western British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon no evidences of intergradation between _S. v. vagrans_ and the races _setosus_, _permiliensis_, _bairdi_, _yaquinae_, or _pacificus_ are seen. In this region _S. v. vagrans_ occurs sympatrically with one or the other of these subspecies. Different degrees of differentiation thus obtain between the subspecies _vagrans_ as here defined and the surrounding subspecies of _Sorex vagrans_ to wit: complete intergradation and allopatry in Utah with _S. v. obscurus_; partial intergradation and partial sympatry with _S. v. obscurus_ in the foothill region from Idaho to British Columbia; no intergradation and complete sympatry with all the other races of _Sorex vagrans_ from the Cascades to the coast and south to San Francisco Bay. The relationship of _S. v. vagrans_ to the wandering shrews of the high Sierra is discussed on page 58.