104 Naturalist at Large 



almost every single cave had been cleared out long ago 

 we should have had an immense amount of evidence not 

 available now. 



What would I not have given to have had a chance to 

 sift the earth out of those caves before it was all dug out 

 and spread over the land! Recently a schoolteacher on 

 the island of Exuma sent up to Cambridge the contents of 

 a little pocket in a cave which had been almost, but not 

 quite, emptied of its cave earth. This contained the bones 

 of a number of fossil birds which when submitted to Dr. 

 Alexander Wetmore, the director of the National Museum 

 and our first authority on fossil birds, showed the presence 

 long ago of species now extinct, and a genus, also, of 

 birds completely tied up with a high forest environment 

 — and yet we had only a tiny and pitiful sample for study. 

 In the same way on half a dozen scattered islands I have 

 found little remnant pockets of undisturbed earth which 

 showed the presence of extinct forms of a genus of rodents 

 of which today there is only a single remnant, the little 

 population of guinea-pig-like rodents on East Plana Cay. 



These little rodents are of the genus Geocapromys, and 

 were probably once very much more widespread than they 

 are now. One species is confined to the high mountains of 

 eastern Jamaica and is very scarce. There was one in Cuba 

 which is now extinct but of which I have found remains in 

 many caves. Then there is another which swarms on Little 

 Swan Island off Honduras, and of course the one which 

 I have mentioned as occurring on East Plana Cay. There 

 is no indication whatever that it ever occurred on the 

 mainland, which may seem a surprising statement in view 

 of the fact that I speak of one occurring on Little Swan 



