12 Joshua Laerm and James L. Boone 



Peromyscus gossypinus — Hall and Kelson (1959), apparently 

 following Osgood (1909), indicated the range of P. gossypinus in 

 Georgia to be restricted to the Coastal Plain. At that time no speci- 

 mens were known from the Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, 

 or Cumberland Plateau provinces. Golley (1962) published new dis- 

 tributional records for Georgia and indicated (Golley 1962:124) 

 specimens occurring in the southeastern portion of the Piedmont 

 (including Columbia, Lincoln, McDuffie, and Wilkes counties), 

 Ridge and Valley (Floyd, Gordon, and Polk counties), Cumberland 

 Plateau (Dade County), extreme upper Piedmont (Habesham County) 

 as well as the Blue Ridge Province (Rabun County). Subsequently, 

 Wolfe and Linzey (1977) mapped the distribution of the species, 

 apparently following Hall and Kelson (1959). Wolfe and Linzey (1977) 

 do not cite Golley (1962); however, Hall (1981) does cite the Golley 

 (1962) records and maps them accordingly, indicating their range 

 extends into the extreme northeastern Piedmont and Blue Ridge 

 provinces. 



We used our discriminant function to examine virtually all P. 

 gossypinus records from Georgia. Specimens from Dade County on 

 the Cumberland Plateau and those from Floyd and Polk counties in 

 the Ridge and Valley are P. gossypinus as noted by Golley (1962). 

 We were unable to locate any museum specimens referred to by 

 Golley (1962) from Habersham or Rabun counties either in University 

 of Georgia Museum of Natural History collections or those of all 

 other North American mammal collections housing specimens from 

 Georgia. Examination of skin tags and records has not indicated any 

 P. gossypinus from those counties to have been re-identified and/or 

 relabeled. We are confident that the specimens of P. gossypinus from 

 Ruban and Habersham counties in Golley (1962) were erroneously 

 mapped because, in his verbal description of the range, Golley (1962:128) 

 indicated P. gossypinus to be found "... on the coastal plain, but 

 extending into the Piedmont on the eastern margin of the state and 

 into the ridge and valley province on the west." He makes no mention 

 of any records in the extreme northern Piedmont or Blue Ridge. Thus, 

 the range of P. gossypinus in Georgia should be amended to extend 

 across the middle portion of the Piedmont from Lincoln and Wilkes 

 counties west to Dekalb and Fulton counties and then west and north 

 into Polk, Floyd, and Dade counties in the Ridge and Valley and 

 Cumberland Plateau (Fig. 1). This is essentially the range as previously 

 depicted by Hall and Kelson (1959) and Wolfe and Linzey (1977). 



