HOWELL — NOTES FOX SQUIRKELS 
37 
of Comparative Zoology, I have been enabled to examine, also, a fine 
series of 12 specimens from the coast region of Georgia (Barrington and 
Hursman’s Lake). 
Typical Sciurus niger is subject to great variation in color and 
exhibits three well-marked color phases. These may be called the 
gray phase, the buff phase, and the black or melanistic phase. The 
gray phase, in its extreme form (specimen from Georgetown, S. C., 
in Biological Survey Collection) is pale smoke gray above, including 
the tail, and white beneath. The crown is black or blackish and the 
nose, ears, and feet white. Some specimens in this phase have the feet 
and under side of tail buff, thus approaching the next darker phase. 
In the buff phase, the general tone of the upperparts is pinkish buff, 
the underparts, feet, and underside of tail rich cinnamon-buff or clay 
color. Numerous intermediate specimens connect this phase with the 
gray phase. The black or melanistic phase — well-known as occurring 
frequently in many species of squirrels — is wholly or partly black or 
dark brown, except the nose and ears, which are white. The large 
series from northern and middle Florida agrees quite closely with the 
series from South Carolina and Georgia except that the gray indi- 
viduals are darker above and tinged with buff below. Both the gray 
and the buff phases are represented, the latter, however, more 
numerously. 
The new race is much deeper colored than any of the series of niger; 
it is apparently restricted in its typical form to the mangrove swamps, 
for numerous specimens examined from the pine and cypress forests of 
Lee and Dade counties, Florida, are variously intermediate between 
niger and avicennia, many of them indistinguishable in color from 
niger, although always smaller. 
Sciurus niger avicennia^ subsp. nov. 
MANGROVE FOX SQUIRREL 
Type, No. 231498, U. S. Natl. Mus., Biological Survey Collection; cT adult, 
skin and skull, from Everglade, Lee County, Florida; collected March 14, 1919, 
by A.,H. Howell; original number 2325. 
Characters . — Similar to Sciurus niger niger but decidedly smaller; colora- 
tion much darker (more tawny) both above and below; feet clearer white (less 
tinged with buff). 
1 In allusion to its favorite haunts in forests of black mangrove {Avicennia 
nitida). * 
