Prairie Gopher 



Length. lo inches. 



Description. Dark, pinkish-brown, inclining to chestnut in some 

 specimens, but with no fulvous tints. Darker on the middle o{ 

 the back; under surface slightly lighter, but not distinctly so 

 as in the Georgia gopher; hair on the feet white; tail hairy, 

 but scantily so toward the tip; hair of basal half brown, 

 terminal half white. 



Range. Mississippi Valley, from North Dakota to eastern Kansas 

 and southern Missouri and including southern Wisconsin and 

 most of Illinois. 



The general appearance and habits of this animal are similar 

 to those of the preceding species. Farther South and West are 

 several other gophers, while from the Plains to the Pacific are 

 found the gray gopher and its allies with ungrooved front teeth, 

 but otherwise much like the animals above described. 



POCKET MICE 



(Family Heteromyidcs) 



These mice are restricted to the western United States and 

 Mexico and are confined largely to the arid regions, so charac- 

 teristic of that portion of the country. They comprise two very 

 different groups of animals — the true pocket mice, little mouse- 

 like creatures with rather coarse hair, and the larger kangaroo 

 rats, with immense hind legs and long brushy-tipped tails, re- 

 calling the jerboas of the Old World. 



Although so different in external appearance, these pocket 

 mice are allied to the mole-like gophers that we have just been 

 considering, and it will be seen at once upon examining them 

 that they possess the same curious external check pouches. We 

 have three modifications of the same type of animal just as we 

 find in the true mice; the gopher corresponding to the meadow 

 mouse, the pocket mouse to the deer mouse and the kangaroo rat 

 to the jumping mouse. The first is adapted for a burrowing life, 

 the second for a life on the surface of the ground and the third 

 specially modified for leaping. 



99 



