Biological Papers. 109 



DISTRIBUTION, NATURAL ENEMIES AND BREEDING 

 HABITS OF THE KANSAS POCKET GOPHER. 



By Theo. H. Scheffer, Kansas State Agricultural College. 



'"r'HE following notes embody some of the results of investiga- 

 ^ tions of the pocket gopher, conducted principally at Manhat- 

 tan. Data were also collected in a number of trips made to various 

 parts of the state, including the banner alfalfa counties, the irri- 

 gated lands of the Southwest, the potato-growing districts of the 

 Kansas valley, and nurseries and orchards in several quarters. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



The prairie pocket gopher, Geomys hursarius, is distributed over 

 that part of the upper Mississippi valley which includes the central 

 and eastern parts of the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, the whole 

 of Iowa, and portions of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minne- 

 sota. On the west, excepting in the Dakotas, its range meets and 

 partly overlaps that of the plains pocket gopher, G. lutescens, and 

 on the south that of the Louisiana gopher, G. breviceps. In the 

 western part of the Dakotas Geomys is replaced by a distinct genus, 

 Thomomys, inhabiting nearly the whole of the Rocky Mountains 

 and Pacific regions. 



KANSAS SPECIES. 



In Kansas the dominant species of gopher is G. hursarius. It 

 is most abundant in the central and northeastern parts of the state, 

 and ranges at least as far west as the ninety-ninth meridian. Here 

 it is partly, and a little further west fully, replaced by the paler, 

 sand-colored species, G. lutescens. Whether the two species inter- 

 grade on the common border of their respective ranges I have not 

 been able to determine. In no part of western Kansas have I found 

 the plains pocket gopher very plentiful. It is more scattering in 

 its distribution than G. hursarius, being locally abundant only in 

 the gravel flats along the streams or among the sand hills. The 

 harder soil of the buffalo-grass tracts has little attraction for this 

 burrowing animal. In the lower Arkansas valley of south-central 

 Kansas the species becomes as abundant, however, as does G. hur- 

 sarius in any quarter of the state. 



If reports of depredations by pocket gophers and demand for 

 measures of repression and extermination can be taken as an index 

 to distribution, it may be seen from the accompanying map that 



