130 GROUND-SQUIRRELS. 
of the sixth feather black. Tail-coverts same 
colour as wings. 
July 8.—After crossing a very high ridge we 
look suddenly down into the valley of the Spokan 
river. The river has a very rapid flow, and 
where we ferry it, in a scow worked by a rope 
from side to side, it is about 150 yards wide. The 
charge for crossing was, I think, a dollar (4s.) per 
head for packed mules; the cattle swam it. 
We camp on a grassy flat, known as Walker's 
Prairie, a few miles from the ferry, where a 
solitary settler keeps a rough kind of inn. I 
wander across the prairie, and am amused with 
the freaks of the ground-squirrels (Spermophilus 
Parryi, Richardson) ; they live in burrows dug 
in all directions into mounds, which mounds, I 
think, are not made by the squirrels. By keeping 
still I soon saw numbers of them emerge from 
their holes, chase one another round the hillock, 
up one side, down the other, as if they were occu- 
pied in playing some game fashionable in squirrel- 
dom. If I move or otherwise make my presence 
known, shrill whistles oft repeated warn the as- 
semblage that danger is at hand; each at once 
makes for its hole and disappears. In coming 
from out their burrows, their habit is to sit upon 
their haunches at the entrance, and with their tiny 
