MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



BY SAMUEL N. RHOADS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Job, the ancient divine and naturalist, asks, " Who teacheth us more than 

 the beasts of the earth or maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?" Owing 

 to the difficulty of making acquaintance with those "beasts of the earth" 

 which we call Mammals, because of their nocturnal, subterranean or aquatic 

 habits, the study of mammalogy has never been as popular as that of the 

 " fowls of heaven." It is, however, no less an interesting and profitable 

 study and even yet furnishes the investigator, in spite of the great activity 

 of the past decade in that branch, a far richer field for original zoological 

 study than does ornithology. To man, himself a mammal, the importance of 

 this study, especially as regards his physical, mental and spiritual relation- 

 ships to the beasts of the earth, cannot, perhaps, be overestimated. 



One of the most noticeable develop'ments in biological research at the 

 present day is along the line of geographic distribution. It has resulted in 

 the solution of many vexed problems which the last century biologist vainly 

 pondered. In the prosecution of this line of research much is discovered of 

 an incidental character relating to the life-history of created things which 

 has hitherto been hidden away. These are some of the facts which induced 

 me, eleven years ago, to begin the work which forms the subject of this 

 paper. In these studies I have been aided to a limited extent by the all- 

 too-meagre and often misleading faunal publications of previous authors. 

 More substantial and valuable aid has been received by means of voluminous 

 correspondence and personal interviews with naturalists, trappers, hunters, 

 old pioneers and frontiersmen living in the regions named. The main 

 source of information, however, has been personal field experience in nearly 

 every county in the two states. The collections of Pennsylvania and New 

 Jersey mammals, resulting from this work, and numbering about 2,000 speci- 

 mens, have recently been acquired by the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia. For the use of the unrivalled literary and museum facilities of 

 this institution and the continued courtesy of its officers I am glad to have 

 this opportunity to express my thankfulness. 



