16G PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
Another collection of considerable importance is that made by 
F. L. Small in Citrus County, Florida. Mr. Small resided here for 
a year and in that time made an extensive collection of the 
mammals. All his skins were divided between the collections of 
Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., and E. A. and O. Bangs, and have already 
formed the basis of considerable work on the Mammalia of Florida. 
Besides these large collections from Florida and Georgia, I have 
received from time to time specimens from different hunters and 
collectors, and a small lot of skins from W. A. Dickinson taken in 
the vicinity of Tarpon Springs, Florida. 
Physical Geography and Distribution of Mammalian Life .— 
The coastal strip of Georgia and northern, central, and southwestern 
Florida agrees very closely in general formation, and also in faunal 
and floral characters. The general character of the country is flat 
and monotonous with a light sandy soil and interminable forests of 
pine, — the “flat woods” or “piny woods” as they are called. In 
this forest the trees grow far apart, and in the higher parts the white 
sand is only partially concealed by an undergrowth of scrub pal¬ 
metto. In the lower and moister places, sphagnum, reeds, and 
some grasses cover the ground, and a great variety of flowering 
plants enlivens the monotony of the scene. Scattered everywhere 
through the flat woods are little cypress ponds, and occasionally the 
forest gradually opens out into extensive tracts of treeless “prairie.” 
Few small mammals live in the piny woods, the fox squirrel, the 
mole, the salamander, the cotton rat, and the cotton-tail rabbit being 
its principal inhabitants. 
Along the margins of streams and in the so-called hummock 
land, the growth is very different from that of the flat woods, and 
the big magnolia, black gum, live oak, water oak, bald cypress, and, 
near the coast, cabbage palmetto form heavy forests. The rich soil 
is overgrown by shrubs and climbing vines, which twisting from 
branch to branch bind the whole into a dense tangle. In such 
places the gray squirrel, the cotton mouse, the rice-fleld mouse, the 
wood rat, and the marsh rabbit live. 
In places through the great pine barrens the ground rises into 
higher ridges of white sand where black-jack oak ( Quercus nigra) 
and turkey oak ( Q. catesbaei) to a great extent replace the pine. 
The young of these two trees often make little clumps of scrubby 
growth, and usually there are patches of scrub palmetto scattered 
about, but the bare white sand shines through everywhere, looking 
nearly 
