168 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
sand hills with many salt Hats between. There are but few trees, 
the growth being for the most part low bushes that mass themselves 
into almost impenetrable thickets in the more sheltered valleys 
between the sand hills. The exposed sand hills are clothed with a 
scattered growth of sea oats (Uniola paniculatci ), the seeds of 
which afford abundant food for the small mammals, that fairly swarm 
over the island. In no place have I seen small mammals so abun¬ 
dant as on Anastasia Island. Besides the three insular species 
peculiar to it, the cotton rat lives there, literally by the thousand, 
and even such a marsh-loving animal as the rice-field mouse can not 
resist its fascinations, and I caught several on the barren sand hills. 
South of the Matanzas River there begins a long sandy beach, 
probably the most beautiful in the world, extending for a distance 
of over 850 miles to Lake Worth. In several places it is inter¬ 
rupted by deep inlets that connect the Indian River and the ocean. 
Back of the beach rise low sand hills, covered with saw palmetto, 
sea oats, and sea grape, the only known abiding place of the little 
Florida beach mouse. The small Florida striped skunk is extremely 
abundant here also, although very rare or entirely wanting in other 
parts of Florida. Along this entire stretch between the Indian 
River and the ocean, known as the east peninsula, all the smaller 
Florida mammals, such as the Florida cotton mouse, Chapman’s 
rice-field mouse, Chapman’s cotton rat, the Florida short-tailed 
shrew, etc., are much more abundant than elsewhere. Back of the 
east peninsula, running parallel to it and separating it from the 
main peninsula, is the Indian River. The river shores are fringed 
by mangrove, and on each side tideless salt savannahs separate the 
upland from the river. On these savannahs in great numbers live 
the Florida water rat and the Florida marsh rabbit. 
The whole of the central and western parts of the Florida penin¬ 
sula is much the same as northern Florida and eastern Georgia; 
the country is rather more rolling, however, and one often sees 
extensive tracts of ground covered with broom grass, hickory, and 
deciduous oak, that are more suggestive of the Carolinas. There 
are a few mammals whose range in Florida is apparently confined 
to the western part of the peninsula, and that do not occur in east¬ 
ern Florida. The old-field mouse and little-harvest mouse are 
good examples of such, and the salamander of the west side of the 
peninsula is subspecifically different from that of the east side, as is 
also the cotton rat. 
