Oct. 1899. MAMMALS FROM OKLA. AND IND. TERRS. ELLIOT. 297 



rat must be rare, as everyone to whom I showed the two speci- 

 mens assured me they had never seen any like them. My trip 

 to White Horse Springs was principally for the purpose of secur- 

 ing a series of this interesting form, and I am happy to say I 

 succeeded in securing 23 specimens of various ages and sizes. 

 The country about White Horse is broken up by deep ravines 

 with here and there rocky buttes, some of them being fully 100 

 feet high. These buttes are of many and curious shapes, some 

 being perfect cones, while others look like immense houses with 

 a chimney at one end ; such, for instance, being 'Chimney Butte ' 

 two and one-half miles north of the spring. All of these high buttes 

 have a deep ledge of rock, a sort of reddish sandstone, near their 

 summits, forming cliffs in some places 20 feet high. Lower 

 down on White Horse Creek there are deep canons, crowned 

 with cliffs of gypsum rock, with here and there caves of con- 

 siderable size. Evidently these gypsum cliffs had at some time 

 previous to my visit been favorite haunts of Neotomas, but they 

 were about abandoned as living places at the time of my visit, 

 though at some former time they must have been great resorts 

 from the immense piles of sticks found there. I caught but 3 

 specimens in these cliffs, all the others being taken in cliffs on 

 the high buttes quite near where I camped. Into the crevices 

 of these cliffs the rats had carried immense piles of sticks, cactus 

 and dried grass and sage; but nowhere did I find any of the hay- 

 cock style of nests such as those near Alva, 20 miles east. From 

 all that I could learn of their food habits they seemed to subsist 

 mainly on green and dried grass, seeds of sumach, and seeds of 

 cactus. In fact this was about all they could get in this semi 

 desert region. Among the loose rock under the cliffs the Neo- 

 tomas had well-beaten runways among the thick growth of weeds 

 and sage. This formed usually a roof over the runways, and I 

 found these to be about 5 inches in diameter on an average. I 

 believe this form of rat to be strictly nocturnal, as I was never 

 able, even by long, patient watching, to see one in day-time. 

 From all that I could learn I also believe them to be migratory 

 to the extent of changing from summer to winter quarters, even 

 though their migrations extend for only a very short distance. 

 That the Neotoma magister Baird of the Alleghany Mountains so 

 migrates I have positive proof, though their migrations are 

 irregular and depend to some extent on the food supply; and I 

 believe this may account for the scarcity of Neotoma m. surberi 

 among the <<Gyp" canons low down on White Horse Creek, 



