784 The American Naturalist. [September, 
succession would in all probability exterminate the blue-bird, 
the snow-bird and many others that winter in the Carolinian 
Zone. These birds went into the winter in their full numbers 
and strength, and yet this summer they are so rare that I have 
not seen a single blue-bird in the Plymouth Co. Mass. country, 
where usually they are one of the common breeding birds. 
Think what a proportionate reduction in numbers must mean 
then to a species already on the verge of extinction. 
The cold in Florida of the last winter was unprecedented 
and the mortality among the fish in the shallow water was 
such as I never thought to witness. The birds suffered very 
much, but as far as I could tell few died as far south as where 
I was, Oak Lodge on the East Peninsular opposite Micco. 
Here, at five o’clock, on the morning of February 12th, the 
thermometer registered 20° Far., and on the next morning at 
the same hour, only 23°. It was a strange experience to walk 
over the frozen sand and see every little puddle covered with 
ice, on a trail overhung by the sub-tropical vegetation of a 
Florida hammock with a north wind blowing in my face that 
chilled me to the bones. The cold of these two days and 
nights was intense. 
On February 19th, Mr. Walter L. Gibson came across the 
river to tell me he had found two manatee that had been 
killed by the “ freeze,’ and the next day I went over to take 
possession of them. They were both found where they had 
floated ashore on the bank of the Sebastian River, one about 
four and the other two miles from its confluence with the In- 
dian river. I found to my great regret that both were too far 
gone to hope to save the skins and the only thing to be done 
was to save the skeletons which we began to macerate out at 
once. One was an old female of very large size, measuring 
from the end of the nose to the end of the tail 11 ft., 4 in. 
The other, a young male, measuring from the end of the nose 
to the end of the tail 6 ft., 4in? Both skeletons are now in 
the collection of E. A. and O. Bangs, Boston, Mass. 
1 The Florida Manatee grows but little larger than this female. The two 
largest I ever heard of were two caught in the St. Lucie River, by Mr. August 
Park of Sebastian, Florida. One in August, 1880, that measured 13 ft., 7 in. 
long, and one in June of the same year, that measured 12 ft. long and estimated 
at two thousand pounds weight. 
