Abstract: With the phenols contaminated soil from a site in Suzhou City as the source of bacterium, and the target contaminant as the only carbon source, the phenols degrading bacteria were screened out by the way of continuous culture, separation and purification. By applying the molecular biological techniques of 16S rDNA gene sequencing and gene trees, the bacterium species were determined. The tolerance and degradation capacity of the bacterium were also investigated. The results showed that two strains of bacteria were screened out, one was Stenotrophomonas maltophilia strain with p-cresol(4-MP) as the only carbon source, and the other was Pseudomonas citronellolis strain with 4-chloro-3-methylphenol(4-C-3-MP) as the only carbon source, which are named bacteria NM and bacteria NCM, respectively. Bacteria NM was well tolerated to 4-MP, which could still propagate when the concentration of 4-MP reached 400 mg/L. However, bacteria of NCM could not tolerate high concentration 4-C-3-MP. When concentration of 4-C-3-MP was higher than 200 mg/L, bacteria NCM was completely suppressed. Bacteria NM cannot degrade phenol in soil, but has high removal efficiency on 4-MP and 4-C-3-MP, and after 20 days, the removal efficiency of 4-MP and 4-C-3-MP were about 43% and 22% respectively. Bacteria NCM can well degrade the three phenols. The removal efficiency of phenol, 4-MP and 4-C-3-MP by bacteria NCM were 20%, 26% and 28% at the 20 ^th day, with an increase by 18, 3 and 6 percentage points respectively compared with that at the 15th day.