BANGS: LAND MAMMALS OF FLORIDA AND GEORGIA. 183 
In the fresh-water ponds and marshes of interior Florida, in many 
places, M. alleni is common. Mr. Brownell took it as far south as 
Enterprise on the head of the St. John’s River. At a large rather 
deep pond-like branch of the wet prairie near Gainesville, called 
Bidden’s Arm, they were very abundant, and in early April, when I 
was there, were busily engaged in making large nests in the water 
bushes, Cephalantlms. The nests rested on the water, and had two 
entrances from below; they were built of water-lily stems, reeds, 
grass, and the green leaves of Sagittaria and Pontideria. The 
water below the nests was from a foot to two and a half feet deep. 
By carefully removing the tops of the nests, placing a steel trap on 
the little platform between the two entrances, and then replacing 
the roof, I caught fourteen rats in a few days; many others left a 
foot apiece behind them, but escaped. Several times when I had 
just taken the top off a nest, I saw the rat dart like a flash up one 
hole and down the other. At other times I saw them at work on 
their nests, generally pushing material up from inside, and once one 
came out and arranged some leaves on top of his house, working 
very fast with his fore feet; while I watched he suddenly vanished, 
and I could not tell whether he slipped off into the water or went 
down into his nest. I could not account for not seeing them swim¬ 
ming about or gathering material, as they evidently work in the 
day time, and were often engaged in house building while I was 
watching them. 
Specimens from the fresh water of interior Florida are rather 
different from those from the salt savannahs of Indian River, but 
the differences are not enough to warrant dividing the species into 
two races. The interior form has blacker upper and whiter under 
parts, and a less hairy tail, than M. alleni typicus, which is colored 
more like a muskrat. 
The discovery of Neofiber in Florida was one of the many sur¬ 
prises of modern mammalogy, but, to one familiar with it in life, 
aware of its great abundance, and the ease with which it can be 
trapped in the simple, old-fashioned steel trap, and looking at a 
pond studded with its conspicuous nests, it seems the strangest event 
in the history of American zoology, that no naturalist out of the 
multitude that have visited Florida since Bartram’s time should 
have taken it, until, in 1884, it fell to the lot of my old friend Fritz 
Ulrich to get the type specimen which Dr. Wittfeld sent to Mr. 
True. 
