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draw himself within his shell and remain perfectly quiet for from one to 
five minutes, and then proceed with his journey or browsing, provided 
you keep still, even though you are within three feet. After feeding he 
returns to his abode and proceeds to masticate the coarse herbage in- 
jested. It is almost comical to see him sitting beside his doorway, his 
black skinny head thrust out, chewing with great satisfaction the morn- 
ing’s repast. It looks like a caricature of a Florida cracker sitting at the 
open window of his cabin chewing tobacco; but the gopher doesn’t 
expectorate. 
The average size of the full-grown gopher is twelve and one-half 
inches in longitudinal, and fourteen in transverse measure of the shell, 
the latter measurement being greater because the enameled shell bends 
underneath to join the plastron, or breast bone, as we might call it. When 
the head and legs are drawn in (the animal has no tail) from every aspect 
there is an arch, compressed, it is true, at the base, and, in the very old, 
slightly so on the top. It is from this peculiar structure that a gopher in 
good condition, weighing eight and one-half pounds, can lift two hundred 
pounds when balanced centrally. I have seen two small gophers, weigh- 
ing four pounds each, attached to a cart as oxen, draw two lads weighing 
together one hundred and twenty pounds. 
On December the third, last, I took Henry Jordan, a very intelligent 
native colored man, with me, and went out to get some gophers for dis- 
section. About a mile from Palm Springs, Florida, there is a tract of 
country, which, eight years ago, contained most valuable orange groves, 
as the long rows of big dead stumps of orange trees testify. It has been 
abandoned and the tenantless, decaying villas, with pine and palm trees 
shooting up through their rotting porches and roofs, and mats of climbing 
roses and jasmine creeping through the open doors and windows plainly 
show. In these abandoned fields the gopher has taken up his habitation. 
On a space of ten acres I counted some fifty gopher holes. The soil is 
typical of Florida uplands—yellowish brown, or like white salt, is the 
sand through which some coarse weeds and grasses emerge in tufts. 
Wherever you see a pile of sand, apparently as much as two flour barrels 
would hold, slightly spread out in front of an arched.doorway, and in that 
sand see the prints of the dragging shell and toe points going inward to 
the door, you can safely say that Mr. or Mrs. Gopher will receive callers 
at home. 
The character of the soil or sand in which the gopher loves to delve 
