MAMMALS. 73 



less on the open range, they are naturally considered undesirable 

 tenants in cultivated land, and their destruction is often necessary 

 lo successful agriculture. Fortunately, they are easily trapped and 

 poisoned and can be eliminated from the farming areas at slight 

 expense of time and trouble. 



Pocket-gopher flesh is as good as that of rabbit or squirrel, and 

 as the animals are always healthy and of exemplary food habits 

 tliere is every reason for utilizing them as food. A camp cook who 

 is also a good trapper can in many localities supply his party with 

 an occasional feast of ]iocket-gopher stew at any time during the 

 summer without violating the game laws. 



Brown Pocket Gopher: Thomoimys fuHcus fuscus Merriam.— 

 These small buffy brown pocket gophers are easily distinguished 

 from the larger, grayer species of the Plains, and in adult females 

 the mamnne are arranged in two posterior and two anterior pairs. 

 They are the only pocket gophers inhabiting the higher parts of 

 the park, where their range is by no means continuous or general. 

 Specimens were collected on Big Prairie, in the North Fork of the 

 Flathead Valley, in the garden back of Glacier Park Hotel, at Sum- 

 mit Station, and near the lower end of St. Mary Lake; and charac- 

 teristic mounds were seen in other places in the park. In 1895 the 

 mounds were found near timberline south of Red Eagle Lake, and 

 in 1917 on the pass between Chief Mountain and Gable Mountain 

 in the open Hudsonian Zone. As these pocket gophers do not inhabit 

 the timbered areas, their range in this region is much more restricted 

 than in the more open country to the south and west. Little open 

 l)arks and dry meadows are their favorite haunts wherever they can 

 find an abundance of mellow soil in which to burrow and vegetation 

 for food. Their hills and burrows are noticeably smaller than those 

 of the larger species of the Plains, but otherwise their habits are 

 essentially the same. The mounds often extend in irregular lines for 

 long distances over the ground, and each shows some indication of the 

 length of time that has elapsed since it was brought to- the surface. 

 Usually a few are of fresh loose black soil that has not been rained on, 

 some are dotted over with a sprinkle of dro])s, and others washed 

 smooth and rounded by one or more heavy rains, while those of the 

 early springtime are packed and hard, and grass is growing up 

 through them. The winter activity of pocket gophers is shown in 

 'the long snakelike molds on the surface of the ground where the soil 

 has been pushed out under the snow and left in long snow tunnels. 

 These have frozen and then become packed and cemented until, 

 as the snow disappears from above, the hard forms have remained 

 through the summer. Usually the mounds are 5 to 15 feet apart 

 along the tumiels or often in groups as the tunnels run in circles 



