Richardson Ground-squirrel 383 



at three cents per tail, $i,i8o was paid out. This represented 

 40,000 Ground-squirrels killed in the municipality of North 

 Cypress (about 400 square miles), and yet it made no obvious 

 difference in their numbers. 



Coues has given us a bright pen-picture of this creature 

 along the Boundary Line. "It is one of the most abundant 

 animals of our country [he says^], occurring by hundreds of 

 thousands over as many square miles of territory, almost to the 

 exclusion of other forms of mammalian life. Millions of 

 acres of ground are honeycombed with its burrows. * * * 

 I never saw any animal — not even Buffalo — in such profusion. 

 I have ridden for days and weeks where they were continuously 

 as numerous as prairie-dogs are in their populous villages. 

 Their numbers to the square mile are vastly greater than I ever 

 ascertained those of S. beecheyi^ the pest of California, to be, 

 under the most favourable conditions." 



Such facts and figures show also how hopeless it is for man 

 to fight these armies by actual onslaught; there is not money 

 enough in the country to carry on such a warfare with success. 

 The wiser plan is to work with other forces, those of nature and 

 of careful science, and the credit of finding the way belongs to the 

 Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agricul- 

 ture. The Ground-squirrel had increased rapidly in numbers 

 with the cultivation of the country throughout its range until 

 about 1894, when it became a serious burden to the farmers. 

 Then was invented the scientific method of poisoning that has 

 given us the upper hand once more and made it easy to deal 

 with the problem. (See end of this chapter.) Since then the 

 Ground-squirrel numbers have fallen below the danger point, 

 though constant vigilance is still the price of good crops, as 

 indeed it is of most good things. 



This species appears above ground very regularly each spring 

 year about the middle of April without regard to the weather, ance 

 Late snowstorms sometimes set in after its reappearance, and 

 the Ground-squirrel becomes unenviably visible as it runs over 



^ Am. Nat., IX, 1875, pp. 148-154. Quoted in Bailey's Report. 



