2 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



The scope of the work now completed, may be thus defined. It treats of 

 both living and extinct, recent and fossil, land and sea mammals found in 

 Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the feral state. It includes not only those 

 indigenous or native to the region but also those which have been intro- 

 duced there either from native or foreign regions, whether by man's direct 

 importation or by voluntary migration due to faunal and floral changes 

 wrought by the deforesting and settling of the country since the beginnings 

 of colonial history. After giving each native species and sub-species its most 

 approved popular and scientific nomenclature with double literary references 

 for the student, the " Type locality,'' " Faunal distribution,'' ^^Distribution in 

 Pr.finsylvania and New "Jersey," " Records" in the two states, "Habits and 

 economic status," "Historic references," "Description of species," and 

 enumeration of "Specimen sexamitied," are also given more or less fully as 

 each requires. 



The fossil species are more briefly considered and in a separate division. 

 Reference has already been made to the miportance of the study of faunal 

 distribution. A map of the two states, giving the limitations of the Lower 

 Canadian, Transition and Upper Austral life-zones represented in their limits, 

 has been prepared and the distribution of each species given in the text is 

 stated in terms of these. The results of my observations enable me to define 

 these with greater exactness than was heretofore possible, and to alter, in 

 some degree, the complexion of the zoogeographic map heretofore used as a 

 standard by students. As near as possible this is made to conform to our 

 knowledge of primeval conditions, a standard now difficult to reproduce, 

 owing to the vital biological changes which have resulted solely from the 

 deforestatior> of our country. Fire, axe, flood, summer sun and winter frost 

 have made the famous hunting grounds and natural game preserves of the 

 Pennsylvania Alleghanies a wilderness indeed. Where once the Canada 

 Lynx, Wolverene, Fisher, Marten, Canada Deer-Mouse, Woodland Jumping 

 Mouse, Northern Hare, and Marsh Shrew found a congenial home, the 

 average mid-summer temperature may now be roughly said to have risen 20 

 degrees, drought and flood quickly succeed each other, winds become tem- 

 pests and winter takes on an Arctic severity. Instead of white pines and 

 hemlocks we have scrub oaks and briars ; instead of fern beds, sphagnum 

 and moist shade we find bare rocks, glaring sun, and withered vegetation. 

 The grinning opossum sneaks up the south slope as the last snowshoe hare 

 hops down the northern one, and the lowland cotton-tail forthwith jumps her 

 ancestral claim. While the rifle and the trap remained their greatest enemies, 

 the beasts of the earth and the fowls of heaven had an even chance, but the 

 era of axe and fire and commercialism has doomed them, unless the era of 

 forestry soon rescues them from extinction. 



To explain more fully the use and intent of the accompanying map of the 



