''SALAMANDERS'' AND ''SALAMANDER'' CATS. 557 



soil surface. If you ask a native the cause of this singular phe- 

 nomenon, which you will perhaps at first be disjjosed to consider a 

 kind of arenaceous eruption which has somehow broken out on the 

 face of Nature, your informant will sententiously reply, " Sala- 

 manders! " 



All this disfigurement is indeed the work of a curious little 

 rodent popularly so named and about the size and color of an ordi- 

 nary rat. He is never seen above ground if he can possibly help it. 

 He digs innumerable branching underground tunnels at depths 

 varying from one to six feet, and these mounds of sand are simply 

 the " dump heaps " which, in his engineering operations, he finds 

 it necessary to make. 



After carrying the excavated earth to the surface this cautious 

 little miner takes the greatest pains to cover up his tracks. ISTo 



Snap-shot" View of a Live "Salamander.' 



opening into his burrow is left. How he manages to so carefully 

 smooth over his little sand mound and then literally " pull the hole 

 in after him " is as yet unexplained. The work is mostly done at 

 night, when observation is especially difficult. Sometimes, when 

 he is a little belated and the early morning twilight admonishes 

 him that it is " quitting time," he gets in a hurry and slights his 

 work. Then a little depression at the top of the mound tells where 

 he has made a hasty exit. Ordinarily the rounding out of the 

 sand pile is as deftly done as though it had all been managed from 

 above. Indeed, the feat actually accomplished by this little under- 

 ground builder appears more puzzling the more it is considered. 

 The most skilled human engineer would confess his inability to 



