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able to go for weeks using up the stores of provision laid up within the 
large intestine. A gopher weighing six pounds had a reserve of two and 
one-half pounds within. I removed one and a half pounds of meat from 
the shell and legs, leaving the rest of his weight in the skeleton. There 
are forty-six laminated sections in the shell of the full-grown gopher; 
these laminae are about one-fortieth of an inch in thickness and readily 
seale off after the animal dies, leaving under each section a segment of 
true bone of the same shape and size. The brain of this animal (weighing 
six pounds) weighs but 40 grains; the spinal cord unusually large. The 
sympathetic and solar plexus largely developed. The heart is larger than 
in other testudo of like weight, having two auricles and a large, strong, 
half-divided ventricle. The lungs are attached to the dorsum of the 
thorax. The diaphragm is stronger than among the turtles. The ovaries 
long and broad, containing ten to twenty mature eggs, three-eighths of an 
inch in diameter, and perfectly spherical. When deposited they have a 
hard calcareous shell. In my specimen there were three hundred immature 
ova in the Fallopian tubes and ovaries; the tubes open into a short vaginal 
sheath an inch from the common outlet. The sex may be distinguished 
by the males having a concave form of the lower third of the sternum, 
while in the female it is slightly convex or flat. The upper part of the 
sternum (plastron) is a solid piece, projecting beyond the shell an inch 
and a half. The eye is covered with a nictating membrane as in birds. 
The general intelligence of the gopher is quite limited. It remembers 
localities, but I do not think it remembers friends or enemies. I have one 
that has had the run of my office, house and yard for several months. It 
has gained in weight and is healthy. She likes a warm, snug corner by 
the fire when the days are cool; when outdoors she wanders about to cer- 
tain places where she formerly found good pasturage. She knows where 
the gate is, and likes to get on the street for a promenade, where she 
walks on the tips of her strong fore claws; her blunt hind legs and club 
feet giving her the appearance of a miniature elephant. 
The gopher, when turned upon the back, can not return to its natural 
position, and when one fights another it is to use its projecting sternum 
as a battering ram, striking his antagonist amidships and throwing him 
over on his back; then, as the vanquished foe thrusts its head and neck 
out to regain position, it receives various blows upon the neck from the 
same source. I have witnessed but one fight of this kind and that was 
