342 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



WOODCHUCKS. 



An unusually large number of complaints of excessive abundance 

 of woodchucks and dama^ by them have been received during the 

 year from points in the Eastern States, These animals also con- 

 tinued to be destructive in the Northwestern States to alfalfa and 

 cultivated crops in the narrow valleys surrounded by rocky promon- 

 tories amid which they live. One farmer writes that they entirely 

 cleaned up 40 acres of wheat and 10 acres of alfalfa and took newly 

 seeded corn out of 2 acres of ground. Demonstration of effective 

 methods for destroying the animals has enabled landowners greatly 

 to reduce losses. In one demonstration in which 1 ounce of strych- 

 nine alkaloid was used to poison green alfalfa tops 81 dead wood- 

 chucks were found. 



HOTJSK KATS AND MICE. 



Information furnished by this bureau through bulletins and special 

 articles on the destructiveness of house rats and mice, the danger 

 to health involved in their presence, and practical methods for their 

 control has been very widely used by magazines, farm journals, 

 and newspapers, and by educational workers and public-spirited 

 citizens in bringing the necessity for active control measures to the 

 attention of individuals and communities. Public sentiment was 

 developed until there is apparent an ever-increasing intolerance of 

 the presence of these animals and the waste due to their depreda- 

 tions. The brown or house rat overshadows all other rodent pests 

 as a waster of food and destroyer of property and as an agent in 

 the dissemination of such serious communicable diseases as the 

 bubonic and pneumonic plagues in man, trichinosis in swine, and 

 avian tuberculosis in domestic poultry. 



A survey made during the year of conditions of rat infestation in 

 27 States east of the Mississippi River showed that rats and their 

 depredations were a problem common to all, complaint against them 

 being as great in New England as in the Cotton Belt, and protests 

 being equally numerous along the Atlantic seaboard and in the 

 Corn Belt. Continual variations of the problem were encountered 

 as specific instances of rat damage peculiar to individual localities 

 were disclosed. Similar study of conditions in States west of the 

 Mississippi River has shown the widespread and serious character 

 of tlie rat problem in the ^Middle Western States and along the 

 Pacific coast. Many local campaigns against rats have been waged 

 throughout the country during the past year, and the bureau has 

 responded to innumerable requests for information, for practical 

 plans of organization, and for effective methods of combating these 

 animals in concerted community efforts. Results thus far obtained 

 emphasize the need of trained leaders in order to secure the proper 

 coordination of local and State organizations, and the employment 

 of methods best adapted to meet the varied situations presented. 

 The bureau has endeavored, so far as practicable with available 

 funds, to meet this need by assigning its specialists in rodent control 

 to render this service to communities requesting help. Further edu- 

 cational effort is of the utmost importance to acquaint the public 



