256 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



and waste places, and they would be practically harmless if they 

 did not also enter the cultivated areas. They are not very active 

 or energetic burrowers, evidently because the rich, mellow soil is so 

 full of bulbs and roots, and so covered with dense vegetation, that 

 little work is necessary to procure abundance of food. Their door- 

 ways are lightly closed and often can be pushed open with the 

 fingers. 



Food habits. Grass and clover are the plants most commonly cut 

 about the doorway^ of the pocket gophers, merely because they are 

 the most abundant plants. Over many of the little native prairies 

 where they occur the wild blue-flowered camas grows in great 

 abundance. In pastures where there was no camas, their stomachs 

 contained only green vegetation, but the camas is undoubtedly their 

 native food. 



Economic status. The county clerk at Tillamook said that $4,000 

 had been paid out in bounties on moles and pocket gophers during 

 1914, and over half of it on gophers, at 25 cents each. One man, he 

 said, had made as high as $100 a month catching them, and one little 

 girl had earned $80 in a month. Then the boys all got busy and the 

 bounty fund was soon exhausted, while the pocket gophers remained 

 numerous. In this mild climate where dairying is the principal in- 

 dustry and clover is the most important crop, these rodents, even 

 though small, are capable of doing considerable damage. 



THOMOMYS NIGER MEBBIAM 

 BLACK POCKET GOPHER 



Thomomys niffer Merriaru, Biol. Soc. Wash. Proc. 14 : 117, 1901. 



Type. Collected at Seton, near mouth of Siuslaw River, Oreg., by J. Ellis 

 McLellan, October 6, 1894. 



General characters. About the size of oreffonus and similar in general char- 

 acters, but with short, heavy skull. Upper parts uniform glossy black, with 

 purple and green iridescence ; lower parts duller and more plumbeous ; feet 

 and tip of tail white. One albino specimen was taken at Scottsburg. 



Measurements. Type : Total length, 225 mm; tail, 81; foot, 30; ear (dry), 6. 



Distribution and habitat. Known only from near the mouth of the 

 Umpqua River, at Seton and Scottsburg, and in the Siuslaw Valley 

 at Mapleton, Deadwood, 10 miles northeast of Deadwood, and 

 Mercer (fig. 57), they occupy the small open spaces near the coast 

 but have not been found in the dense timber covering most of that 

 country. No peculiarities of habits have been noted. 



THOMOMYS MONTICOLA MAZAMA MERRIAM 

 MAZAMA POCKET GOPHER; MO-NANA-TAM-HAS of the Klamath (C. H. M.) 



Thomomys mazama Merriam, Biol.. Soc. Wash. Proc. 11: 214, 1897. 



Type. Collected at Anna Creek, near Crater Lake, Oreg., by Edward A. 

 Preble, September 3, 1896. 



General characters. Size medium, about as in oreffonus; rather light and 

 slender; ears well developed and pointed, about 6 mm in dry skins: upper 

 incisors not protruding, curved downward at right angles to axis of skull; 

 upper parts bright russet brown ; ear patch blackish ; nose plumbeous ; lower 

 parts rich buff or ochraceous; feet and tail whitish; tail usually gray above 

 at base. 







