1894.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 218 



A CONTRIBUTION TO THE LIFE HISTORY OF THE ALLEGHENY CAVE 

 RAT, NEOTOMA MAGISTER Baird. 



BY SAMUEL N. RHOADS. 



In 1857, Prof. S. F. Baird described a fossil Neotoma from the bone 

 caves of Pennsylvania in a final paragraph under caption of Neotoma 

 occidentalis, on page 498 of his work on the Mammals of North 

 America. It reads : "The bone caves of Pennsylvania have furnished 

 me with several lower jaws of a fossil Neotoma considerably larger 

 than the largest specimen even of any recent species which I have 

 seen. The body could not have been less than twelve inches in 

 length ; it differs from the others in the wider and more massive 

 molars, the lobes of which are all more nearly equal than in the rest, 

 and all rounded, not angular. The inner and outer sides of the 

 molars are very nearly symmetrical, and the indentations or folds of 

 nearly equal depth. The axis of the condyloid process is quite ob- 

 lique, and the condyle below the level of the coronoid. The species 

 may be called N magister." 



In 1893 Mr. Witmer Stone received two specimens of a cave rat 

 in the flesh from South Mountain, Cumberland County, Pennsylva- 

 nia, taken at an elevation of 2,000 feet, at a point known as Lewis's 

 Rocks, about six miles from the village of Pine Grove in the same 

 county. These he described' under the name Neotoma pennsylvaniea, 

 making no comparisons in the description lietween his new species 

 and N. magister, the type specimens of which came from a valley cave 

 about 20 miles distant from Lewis's Cave. Since then a large series 

 of "fossil" specimens of N. magister, included among the complete 

 collections from Hartman's and Durham Caves, and on which Prof. 

 Joseph Leidy based his paper on "Fossils in Caves and Crevices of 

 the Limestone Rocks of Pennsylvania," - have been found stowed away 

 in the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences. Among them 

 is a mandible of N. magister, labeled from " Harrisburg Cave," pre- 

 sented by the Smithsonian Institution, and no doubt from the type 

 lot on which Baird based his original notice of magister. Besides 



' Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Pliila., 189:5. \>. Hi. 

 2 Eep. Penna. Geoi. Surv., 1887, pp. 1-20. 



