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subsoil, at a depth of eight or nine feet beneath the surface. Like its 
European relative, the gopher is a very long-lived animal. That it 
may live more than one hundred years I am inclined to believe is true. 
Certain it is that a quarter of a century brings little or no change to a 
full-grown tortoise, and the oldest inhabitant in Florida can not tell of 
the beginnings of some of their burrows. Such ancient and well-estab- 
lished domiciles, with entrances always invitingly open, naturally serve 
as places of refuge for many animals, when hard pressed by enemies, 
or to night prowlers when daylight overtakes them far from their 
proper homes. Even the rattlesnake, according to popular repute, has 
a more than passing acquaintance with these cool retreats. 
A number of years ago I learned that the gopher has for a permanent 
guest, a sort of parlor boarder as it were, a batrachian, commonly called 
the gopher toad. Specimens of these I frequently saw on summer even- 
ings sitting at the entrance of the burrows after the manner of toads, 
quietly waiting for their supper to come to them. On the slightest 
alarm these timid creatures leaped quickly back into the gopher hole 
and saved themselves, so that it was not until lately that I succeeded 
in capturing a specimen, and found to my surprise that the so-called 
toad was a veritable frog. The herpetologists of the National Museum, 
to whom I have recently forwarded specimens, pronounce it the very 
rare subspecies Rana areolata wsopus Cope. Indeed, only the type 
specimen existed in the Museum collection, and of its habits nothing 
was known. 
The desire to know something more of the gopher and its associates 
led me finally to undertake the laborious task of excavating and thor- 
oughly examining one of their burrows. Accordingly, in January, 1893, 
I selected one of the largest burrows near my winter home at Crescent 
City and proceeded to open and inspect its inner recesses. The 
excavation was in the loose yellow sand of our pine woods subsoil, and 
when my exploration was completed, so large a pit had been dug that 
a coach and span of horses might have been swallowed up in it. 
I had not descended many feet along the course of the burrow when 
I found that the walls and particularly the roof of the gallery were 
alive with specimens of a wingless cricket of the genus Ceuthophilus. 
I next caught a glimpse of a very diaphanous Staphylinid, but so 
agile was this beetle and so like in color to the surrounding sand that 
several specimens slipped in succession through my fingers and escaped 
me. In subsequent explorations [recaptured this insect, which proves 
to be a Philonthus hitherto undescribed and remarkable for its slender- 
ness of stature, its lack of color, and the distinctly subterranean 
appearance which marks a true cave insect and dweller in darkness. 
As I approached the end of the burrow, the sand became fairly alive 
with larve and imagos of a small Aphodius, also a colorless species, 
very subterranean in appearance. This is likewise an undescribed 
member of its genus closely allied to, but distinct from, common forms 
now living in the dung of domestic animals. 
