Spermophilus musicus Ménétries, 1832 . Cat. Raisonne des Objets de Zoologie, St. Petersbourg, p. 21.

TYPE LOCALITY: "Il habite le Caucase sur les montagnes le plus élevées et pas loin des nieges éternalles." Restricted by Sviridenko (1927, see Ognev, 1963a: 114) to "Ush-Kulan," [Georgia] .

DISTRIBUTION: N Caucasus Mtns (Georgia).

SYNONYMS: boehmii (Krassovskii, 1932); saturatus (Ognev, 1947) .

COMMENTS: Subgenus Spermophilus (Gromov et al., 1965:249) . Regarded by Ellerman and Morrison-Scott (1951:508) and Corbet (1978c:83) as a subspecies of pygmaeus . Gromov et al. (1965:249) and Vorontsov and Lyapunova (1970) provided evidence of specific distinctness.