NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 45 



with a few pale hairs on the under side. Total length of an 

 adult male (the type), 535 mm. (21.25 inches); tail vertebrae, 

 260 (10.25 inches); hind foot, 75 (about 3 inches); skull, occip- 

 itonasal length, 65.5. 



This squirrel is confined to "the damp, dark forests of black 

 and red mangrove which extend practically without a break 

 from Marco Pass to Cape Sable and around the southern end 

 of the peninsula" of Florida, "to the shores of Biscay ne Bay 

 on the east coast." Here it is apparently not common, for 

 Ho well writes that " several days spent in hunting through these 

 mosquito-infested forests resulted" in only a brief glimpse of 

 one, while the type specimen he secured through an Indian boy 

 who knew where its home tree was located. A small series of 

 specimens, however, was secured by W. S. Brooks in the spring 

 of 1920, for the Museum of Comparative Zoology, mostly in the 

 black phase. I am indebted to Dr. Thomas Barbour for a few 

 notes on this squirrel. He tells me that it is well known to the 

 residents of the region, though not regarded as common, and 

 that it may be found on even some of the isolated keys grown 

 up to mangroves. Its feeding habits are remarkable for, in- 

 stead of depending on nuts and other seeds, it lives on the buds 

 and bark of the mangroves, gnawing the latter from twigs 

 which it cuts. Dr. Barbour reports that after the hurricane 

 that passed over this region a few years ago its numbers seem 

 to have been lessened. Evidently it is very difficult to secure 

 satisfactory estimates of the size and extent of this squirrel 

 population, since the swamps can hardly be penetrated except 

 by canoes along small waterways. While this race of fox 

 squirrel may be in no very immediate danger at the present 

 time, it might easily be affected by any large-scale attempts to 

 alter the local ecologic conditions. 



BRYANT'S Fox SQUIRREL; PENINSULA Fox SQUIRREL 

 SCIURUS NIGER BRYANTI H. H. Bailey 



Sciurus niger bryanti H. H. Bailey, Bull. Bailey Mus. and Library of Nat. Hist., no. 

 1, p. 1, Aug. 1, 1920 ("Cambridge, Dorchester County, Maryland"). 



Dorchester County, Md., lies on the southwestern side of 

 the large peninsula, nearly cut off from the mainland on the 

 east by Delaware Bay and Delaware River and on the west by 

 the long estuary formed by Chesapeake Bay. Isolated in the 



