596 MONOGRAPHS OF NORTH AMERICAN RODENTIA, 
Dr. J. G. Cooper's notice, in the second part of the xii. volume of the 
Pacific Railroad Reports,* was as follows : — 
“The ‘Sewellel’ of Lewis & Clark, appears to be an abundant animal 
in some districts west of the Cascade mountains, but from various causes I 
never could obtain a specimen. At the time of their visit to the country the 
Indians used the skins as clothing, and as it required a large number of skins 
to make an ordinary sized blanket, the numbers of the animals caught must 
have been great. It was caught by stone fall-traps, but with what bait I do 
not know, probably some root. The Indians assured me that none were found 
nearer to the coast than the Cowlitz valley, but as they have been obtained 
at Astoria, the statement was not altogether correct. They seem to prefer 
the soft alluvial river bottoms, where they are said to burrow, and probably 
thus follow down the Columbia. Now they are rarely caught by the Indians, 
as their skins are not bought by the Hudson’s Bay Company, except when 
passed off on a ‘green’ clerk as muskrat skins. Of their habits I could learn 
little. An-old Indian hunter, who is now a shepherd in the employ of Dr. 
Tolmie at Puget’s Sound, told him that he had frequently seen them running 
over the snow in the Nisqually Valley, so that they probably do not hyber- 
nate. A young man who had kept school at Astoria told me that the children 
sometimes caught them about the schoolhouse, where they burrowed, and 
that they could be caught by running after them, as they did not run fast. 
When taken they did not offer to bite, and ate vegetable food readily. The 
specimen sent from there was found drowned in a tanner’s vat.” 
The same volume from which Dr. Cooper’s above-quoted observations 
were extracted contained a variety of further information, contributed by 
Dr. George Suckley, well known for his natural-history studies of Oregon and 
Washington, and by George Gibbs, Esq., the distinguished ethnographer and 
philologist. Among other items of their respective accounts may be specially 
noted Mr. Gibbs’s determination of the inapplicability of the name ‘‘Sewellel” 
to this animal, and his observation of its curious habit of laying out its pro- 
visions to dry. Mr. Gibbs, as quoted by Dr. Suckley (p. 100 of the volume 
referred to’), said : — 
“The specimen I send you was obtained at Seattle, where it was killed - 
in a garden. Its name, in the Nisqually language, is Showt’l, (Showhurll,t 
* Republished as the “Natural History of Washington Territory ”. 
t“ Showhurll”—sic, in the original, which I suppose to be a typographical error for an intended 
Showhurtl. 
