MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 89 



which are most secure from the approach or entrance of the predaceous 

 animals which abound in such situations. The entrances and passageways to 

 these abodes are loosely barricaded with sticks, stones, leaves, feathers, 

 bones, horse and cow droppings, buttons, glass, tin, egg-shells, cartridge- 

 cases, and other cast-away evidences of the sojourn of men and animals in 

 this spot. Many of the sticks are three to four feet long and an inch in 

 diameter, and must have required the concerted strength of several rats to 

 move, and not a little ingenuity to convey up and over the precipitous clefts 

 to their resting-place. The bones were those of deer, smaller carnivora, 

 birds, and other animals brought thither by man and beast, or which had 

 sought refuge among the clefts to die. I was unable, from the nature of their 

 fastnesses, and lack of time and proper implements, to penetrate their dor- 

 mitories, and owing to the pilfering foxes, lost the only specimens that got 

 into my traps. One half-grown rat was seen running among the rocks. It 

 was lighter gray than adult specimens. Quantities of gnawed acorn hulls 

 strewed their hiding places, and were the chief evidences of the diet of this 

 species. These acorns grow abundantly on the scrub oaks, Quercus banisteri, 

 characteristic of these mountain tops. While its main food supply is vege- 

 table, no doubt these rats are omnivorous, and take every opportunity to 

 satisfy their carnivorous appetite. The gnawed condition of the bones of 

 recent mammalia found in Pennsylvania cave deposits, is to my mind almost 

 solely due to the work of this quadruped, a critical examination of these 

 marks showing not only their rodent origin, but that their size and character 

 fit no tooth so well as that of magister. 



" I am informed by Mr. H. C. Mercer (whose recent explorations of Vir- 

 ginia caves have been ably outlined in a Bulletin of the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, dated July 4, 1894) that the Virginia cave rats build a sub-globular 

 nest of grass, etc., on the cave floor, and that these are so well made inter- 

 nally as to resist considerable kicking about. Prof. E. D. Cope, who secured 

 the two specimens of magister tabulated above, from a cave in Wythe Co., 

 Virginia, tells me that these nests are placed at or near the sides of the cave, 

 and are often large enough to fill a bushel basket." Rhoads, Proc. Acad. N. 

 Sci., 1894, pp. 219, 220. 



" My experience with the cave rat in Kentucky is confined to an unsuccess- 

 ful attempt to capture them in Mammoth Cave during a visit there in April, 

 1895, in company with Professor R. E. Call. At that time I examined their 

 rendezvous and conversed with some of the guides concerning them. Sub- 

 sequently I received alive an adult male specimen, and studied the habits of 

 the animal in captivity for nearly a month before sacrificing its life to science. 



The only place where I noted evidences of this animal in Mammoth Cave 

 was about a quarter of a mile from the entrance, in the wide passageway 

 known as The Main Cave. 



