288 



MAMMALS 



Mus musculus (Linn.). House Mouse. 



One was caught in a trap set on the low ground (Substation d), 

 in a patch of swamp milkweed. 



Peromysciis jnauiculatus bairdi (Hoy and Kennicott). White-footed 

 Prairie Mouse. 

 Caught on the high ground in a patch of wild sunflowers, in a 

 mouse trap baited with apple. 



Sylvilagiis floridanus mearnsi (Allen). Common Rabbit. 



Rabbits were very common here during the spring and summer 

 of 191 3. They would frecjuently jump up from their resting places 

 in the herbage of the low ground. Many were present in the fields 

 about the station. The animal is abundant in the prairie region 

 north of Charleston. 



Blarina parva (Say). Small Short-tailed Shrew. 



One was found drowned in an old well at the edge of the small 

 piece of swamp just east of the station, on March 16, 1914. 



Besides the vertebrates just listed, a number of others certainly 

 inhabit the piece of right-of-way, and the above record probably in- 

 cludes only a small fraction of those actually present. Some species 

 of birds that were probably overlooked are the Wilson's snipe, and 

 one or more kinds of wild ducks. The former has been flushed in 

 places about Charleston similar to Substation d; and on October 30, 

 191 1, the writer saw, from a train, a wild duck fly up from the pool 

 which has its west margin at this station. Hunters say that ducks 

 visit this place in spring and autumn whenever water is present there. 



Little was learned concerning the kinds of mammals at Station L 

 A number of burrows on the high ground of the station appeared to 

 be gopher burrows. From Mr. F. E. Wood's published notes on the 

 mammals of Champaign County* — a county less than twenty miles 

 north of Coles County — and from data on these forms obtained from 

 the writer's observations about Charleston, it appears that the fol- 

 lowing belong to the fauna of the piece of prairie under consider- 

 ation, either as occasional visitors or as permanent inhabitants. 



*A Study of the Mammals of Champaign County, Illinois. Bull. 111. State Lab. 

 Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII, Article V (1910), pages 501-613. 



