ALLEN — INSULAR RACE OF COTTON RAT 
235 
On this same trip I found in another building, a large log cabin this 
time, two nests and various piles of sticks, among which were thistles 
and pieces of rose bushes. In a closet or small room in this house 
I found aspen leaves piled on the shelves in a manner similar to those 
in the shafthouse. 
At Alma I heard a story of some miners who, having missed several 
pounds of candles, later found them laid away on a shelf or ledge in or 
behind the timbers 35 feet down a shaft, where a rat had carried them. 
As there are six candles to the pound the animal, or animals, went to 
much trouble for nothing. 
AN INSULAR RACE OF COTTON RAT FROM THE FLORIDA 
KEYS 
By Glover M. Allen 
In April, 1920, Mr. Winthrop Sprague Brooks collected two adult 
cotton rats (Sigmodon) on Big Pine Key, Florida, which are so different 
from those of the neighboring mainland, that they seem worthy of 
recognition as representatives of a distinct island race. Through the 
generosity of Dr. Thomas Barbour, the specimens are in the collection 
of the Museum of Comparative Zoology to the authorities of which 
I am indebted for the privilege of studying them. 
Big Pine Key is one of a group of small islands lying some thirty- 
five miles southwest of Cape Sable, the nearest point on the mainland 
of Florida. A chain of larger and smaller islands trends northeast 
from Big Pine to Key Largo and forms the eastward margin of the 
Bay of Florida. The other islands of the chain continue westward to 
the Dry Tortugas. These southern keys have no doubt been sepa- 
rated from the peninsula itself for a long period. 
Due to the investigations of Messrs. F. M. Chapman and Outram 
Bangs, the cotton rat of the subtropical tip of the Florida peninsula 
has long been recognized as a well-marked geographical race, — Sig- 
modon hispidus spadicipygus , — readily distinguishable from the larger 
and darker races to the north, — S. h. littoralis, covering most of penin- 
sular Florida, and S. h. hispidus of Georgia and the southeastern states. 
The new race needs comparison with the first-named only. It may 
be known as 
