350 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



help him in every conceivable way to control them. But we do not 

 agree with the policy of wholesale extermination advocated by some 

 persons for all areas alike. We hold that our native plant life, on 

 hill and mountainside, in canyon and mountain meadow, would soon 

 begin to depreciate, were the gopher population completely de- 

 stroyed. Not that such a thing is at all possible ; but that it should 

 not be thought of, even, by any intelligent person who seeks to in- 

 terpret nature correctly. Much less should public money be spent 

 for such a purpose. On wild land the burrowing rodent is one of 

 the necessary factors in the system of natural well-being. 



