BATCHELDER: DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALS. 
193 
square miles, densely wooded with white cedar (Chamaecyparis 
sphaeroidea Spach.). The cedars stand crowded close together, 
each one rising from a hummock formed of its own roots and the 
mass of sphagnum growing on them. Between the hummocks, even 
in summer, the water lies in shallow pools, save where it is covered 
by a luxuriant growth of the spongy sphagnum. Sometimes, here 
and there, in spots where the cedars have opened their ranks and 
left room enough for other trees to grow, there are a few red maples 
or white pines, and an occasional yellow birch or stunted black 
spruce. 
Farther north, in Middlesex and Essex Counties, where these 
cedar swamps are comparatively few and seldom large, Evotomys 
often finds its home in swampy woods of old red maples, where the 
thick foliage of the spreading branches casts a dense shade, some¬ 
times made even darker by an undergrowth of tall shrubs, among 
which the higli-bush blueberry ( Vaccinium corymbosum L.) is the 
chief. Here too sphagnum flourishes, and covers the roots and 
hummocks that rise a little above the lower levels of the wet ground. 
In a few places in these counties there yet remain small tracts of 
woods of black spruce, good-sized trees growing on low, wet ground, 
that afford a cool shelter in which this animal is able to live. 
It is probable that formerly, when the country was less thickly 
settled, Evotomys was much more abundant and universally distrib¬ 
uted in eastern Massachusetts than it is now. With the growth of 
population, the draining of land and the cutting down of woods 
have gradually deprived it of a vast amount of territory in this 
region that once was suited to its needs. On Cape Cod of late years 
the cedar swamps have been stripped of their trees and turned into 
cranberry bogs to such an extent that, if this industry should 
increase but a little more, there is every probability that Evotomys 
would cease to exist within the limits of Barnstable County. 
Printed, October, 1896. 
