Also tuça (erron. tuca). [a. Sp. tuza, ad. Mexican tuçan or tozan, the native name.] A Mexican pocket-gopher or pouched rat: a rodent, formerly supposed to be a kind of mole.
[1652. Hernandez, Hist. Anim. & Min. Novae Hisp., I. xxiv. 7. De Tucan, seu Talparum Indicarum quodam genere.]
1787. Cullen trans. Clavigero’s Mexico, II. 321. Tuza, not Tucan as Count de Buffon writes, in Mexican tozan, a quadruped of Mexico of the mole kind but larger and more beautiful.
1895. C. H. Merriam, in U.S. Dept. Agric., N. Amer. Fauna, No. 8. 112. The tuza series [of Geomys] inhabits the South Atlantic and Gulf States south of the Savannah River and east of the Mississippi…. The members of the tuza series agree among themselves and differ from the remaining forms of the genus Geomys in having longer and more naked tails, and in numerous cranial characters.
