POCKET GOPHEES 



143 



There, man has disturbed the original balance of natural relations between 

 plants and animals; he aims to make the land produce crops of selected 

 plants in the largest measure possible, and to that end he cultivates the 

 ground himself by very effective 'artificial' means. He resents the levy 

 upon the land and its products by any other animal. Most of the original 

 quota of herbivorous mammals have gone before him ; but the gopher and 

 ground squirrel have been able to persist under the changed conditions 

 and have availed themselves of man's crops. Yet it is clear that we have 

 here, most surely, a reversal of the relationships obtaining in the wild. 

 In the wild, there is no cultivation in the artificial sense. The crops of 

 wild plants — grasses, herbs, shrubs, and even trees — depend upon whatever 

 favorable agencies cooperate in natural ways. The happy relation found 

 by our pioneers was the result of eons of adjustment among all of the 

 elements concerned. Gophers have been at work as gophers of modern 

 type since Miocene time. We grant that the farmer must combat the 

 gopher in his fields; we sympathize with him for yearning for the total 

 eradication of the rodents there. But we do not agree with the policy of 

 wholesale extermination advocated by some persons for all areas alike. 

 We hold that the native plant life on hill and mountainside, in carion and 

 mountain meadow, would at once begin to decline, were the gopher popu- 

 lation completely destroyed. Not that such a thing is at all possible ; but 

 it should not be thought of, even, by any intelligent person who seeks to 

 interpret nature corectly. On wild land the pocket gopher, with its fellow- 

 rodents of burrowing habits, constitutes a necessary link in the system of 

 natural well-being. 



Fig. 25. Cartoon suggesting relation between work of Pocket Gophers on the 

 Nevada and accumulation of fertile sediments on floor of San Joaquin Valley. 



Sierra 



