MAMMALS. 55 



and were given in varying numbers that reminded me of a tele- 

 graphic code of signals. This was not due to her imprisonment, as I 

 have previously heard and watched woodrats make these signals in 

 camps and cabins and among the rocks. The object is evidently to 

 call or attract the attention of other individuals, to give some warn- 

 ing, or to convey such meaning from one to another as may be of serv- 

 ice to them. While not given in the dots and dashes of the Interna- 

 tional Morse Code, there is sufficient variation in the tapping to con- 

 vey considerable expression of feeling if not of definite ideas. The 

 tail Avas never moved during the thumping and was usually coiled 

 along the side or lying quietly at rest. 



Bread, toast, blueberry roll, crackers, and oatmeal in plenty were 

 put in the box with hor. but she seemed not to care much for any of 

 them. When I put in a bunch of green plants she at once began 

 to eat the leaves of the fireweed, thimbleberry, Spircea^ and other 

 plants, and the next morning had finished most of the leaves, 

 although she had scarcely touched the bread and grain. She was 

 active all night and kept me awake by gnawing her box, thumping 

 with her feet, and trying to find a way out of her well-screened cage. 

 One morning, putting her in a bag, I took her back to her house 

 in the cave, and after looping a soft, gi^een fishline over one foot let 

 her sit on her old doorstep for a picture. She posed well in many 

 positions and w^ith many expressions before I let her go back to her 

 children in the old and well built cliff dwelling that she may have 

 inherited from a thousand generations of ancestors. She could cer- 

 tainly never have been happy away from this familiar cliff above the 

 roar and spray of the falls, wdiere every shelf, nook, and corner were 

 familiar to her, where the trails led around to a brush-covered rock 

 pile, where thimbleberries, serviceberries, chokecherries, and numer- 

 ous seeds and bulbs could be found to go with her fare of green 

 leaves and flowers, and where a power house not far away and 

 neighboring chalets and outl)uildings afforded some choice scraps of 

 food and interesting ground for exploration. 



Li winter some of the more adventuresome individuals of this 

 woodrat colony visit the storehouses and even take up their abode 

 in them. A teamster who slept at night in the winter storehouse 

 at the end of the bridge told me that one morning he missed his 

 watch and was sure a woodrat had taken it, because a piece of leather 

 shoAving the print of sharp teeth was left Avhere the w^atch had been 

 lying on the floor by the side of his bed. A careful search under 

 the floor of the building finally disclosed the watch with other accu- 

 mulations of building material where a woodrat had established 

 its residence. As woodrats are inveterate builders, always gather- 

 ing building material of a size convenient for carrying, the habit 

 of dropping whatever they are carrying and taking any other object 



