434 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL XXXII. 
such comparison easy. Up to 1883 (1871-83) only 35 species were 
recognized from the region in question; this number is now raised 
by Mr. Bangs (including numerous subspecies) to 73. Five of 
these, however, are from the coast region of Georgia, only 68 being 
enumerated as Floridian. 
“The coastal strip of Georgia and northern, central, and south- 
western Florida agrees very closely in general conformation, and also 
in faunal and floral characters.” The general surface of the country 
is “flat and monotonous, with a light sandy soil and interminable 
forests of pine.” The coast region of Georgia and northeastern 
Florida, south to Matanzas River, “is one continuous stretch of salt 
tide-marsh interlaced by deep creeks, and now and then broken by a 
sandy beach where some higher point of land meets the deep water.” 
Along this coast is a series of islands, some of the larger of which, 
as Cumberland Island, Georgia, and Anastasia Island, Florida, and 
some of the Florida Keys, though separated so slightly from the 
mainland, appear to have developed a number of well-marked insu- 
lar forms, the discovery of which has done much to increase the 
list of species now recognized from the general region. But aside 
from this, peninsular Florida, which is subinsular in position and 
environment, has furnished in recent years not only many new spe- 
cies and subspecies, but some forms so distinct from any previously 
known as to fairly entitle them to rank as new subgenera. The 
increase in the list of recognized forms is thus only in part due to 
the fine discriminations it is possible to make by aid of the greatly 
increased and vastly better condition of the material now available 
for study, as compared with even a decade ago, but to the thorough 
exploration of what appears now to have been, up to within a very 
few years, a very imperfectly known region, mammalogically speaking. 
But this was not only the case with Florida, but with North 
America at large, not excluding even the long-settled parts of the 
eastern states. Most of the smaller mammals are chiefly nocturnal 
and more or less subterranean in their habits, and formerly, even as 
late as fifteen yeats ago, their capture was largely a matter of acci- 
dent, and series of specimens of any but the most common species 
did not exist. Then, too, their preparation was so faulty as to 
greatly impair their value for study, and measurements taken from 
the animals “in the flesh,” or before skinning, were rarely available. 
But of late all this has been changed; the trapping and preparation 
of small mammals have been reduced to a science, so that certain 
kinds of mammals it was formerly thought almost impossible to 
