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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



that Professor Baird's name of Neotoma magister for this rat 

 was originally applied to what he considered a fossil species, 

 described from some lower maxillaries taken in a cave near 

 Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Similar remains were afterward found 

 in other caves, but it was not till 1893 that Mr. Witmer Stone 

 announced the discovery of a living Neotoma in the South 

 Mountain, not many miles distant from the Carlisle cavern 

 which produced Baird's types. To this animal Mr. Stone gave 

 the name Neotoma pennsylvanica. Not long after I made a 

 comparison of the remains of the extinct (?) rat with Mr. 

 Stone's types, and in " A Contribution to the Life History of 

 the Alleghany Cave Rat " (1. c.) endeavored to show that the 

 living and so-called ''fossil" Neotomcp were specifically the 

 same. In his Review of the Neotomyince, (1. c.) Dr. Merriam 

 considers them distinct, but Dr. J. A. Allen, in a recent paper, 

 inclines to the belief that they are identical. 



Eastern Deer Mouse. Peromyscus leucopus Rafinesque. 



Musculus leucopus Raf. Amer. Mon. Mag., Ill, 18 18, p. 446. 

 Peromyscus leucopus Thomas. Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., XV, 1895, 

 p. 192. 



Geographic distribution. Carolinian fauna, from the Mis- 

 sissippi River to the Atlantic, and from latitude 34 to the 

 Great Lakes. 



Habitat. Woodlands; living in hollow logs and subter- 

 ranean burrows, sometimes nesting in trees. 



Habits. The White-footed or Deer Mouse is abundant in 

 the vicinity of Mammoth Cave, where I caught a few during 

 my brief sojourn. Two specimens were taken at the mouth 

 of the cavern, and Professor Call sends me another secured in 

 the cave itself. Of its habits in the cave I know nothing, but 

 its only inducement to enter the place would be in search of 

 such food as the rats scatter in their carnivals or for the insect 

 life which abounds there. It can hardly be considered as 

 more than a transient visitor to Mammoth Cave, as its choice 

 is the open woodlands, and in many respects it shows a more 

 arboreal and less subterranean manner of life than any other 

 of the known American Muridcs. 



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