358 Kansas State Board of Agriculture. 



true of the large cultivated tubers he often steals from the fields or bins 

 of the unlucky farmer. Observations on the habits of a pocket gopher 

 kept in captivity by Doctor Merriam, of Washington, D. C., seemed to 

 indicate that the animal when thus storing his larder can travel as 

 easily and as readily backward as forward. The writer states that the 

 gopher moved back and forth from food supply to storeroom like a 

 shuttle on its track, rarely turning around after securing a load. In its 

 backward progression the sensitive tail served as an organ of touch. 



The popular idea that the gopher uses his cheek pockets for carrying 

 out the earth from his burrow is certainly erroneous. I have watched 

 many gophers at work, and noted that the process of removing the 

 earth is always the same: the dirt is pushed ahead of the animal in 

 armfuls. Examination of the pockets of gophers shot in the act of re- 

 moving earth, or trapped at any time, reveals no traces of contained 

 ea.rth. At this point it might be well to state also that no part of a 

 gopher's runway necessarily extends down to a supply of water, as cur- 

 rently supposed. Like many other animals that feed upon more or less 

 succulent vegetation, sufficient water for the tissues of the body is ob- 

 tained in the food. 



ACTIVE SEASON. The pocket gopher seems to be busy at any season 

 of the year when the ground is not frozen too hard and too deep for 

 mining operations. Not uncommonly we see mounds of fresh earth 

 thrown up from beneath the snows of midwinter. It is unlikely, there- 

 fore, that, strictly speaking, the animal ever hibernates in this part of 

 the country. During the briefer periods of particularly inclement 

 weather in the winter no mounds are thrown up, and if the animal bur- 

 rows lower then to escape the frost, as some have observed, he must dis- 

 pose of the earth in tunnels or pockets previously excavated. It is my 

 belief, however, that the gopher spends these stormy periods near the 

 supplies of stored food. Evidence of this habit is given by certain 

 mounds thrown up in the spring that are made up almost wholly of 

 crumbling pellets of excrement and fragments of nest material. October 

 and November is a season of particular activity. Impelled by instinct, 

 that exacts obedience without forecasting the winter, the gophers then 

 extend their runways in all directions in search of food for their under- 

 ground cellars. At this time of year the best results can usually be 

 obtained in poisoning or trapping the animals. In the spring, again, 

 after the frost has left the ground, this activity is renewed for a time; 

 but when the season for breeding and rearing the young comes on ex- 

 tension of the burrows receives less attention. 



It has been said that the gopher is a solitary animal; that no two in- 

 dividuals ever occupy the same burrow except in the mating season. 

 This statement is not in accordance with my observations, for I have on 

 several occasions trapped a second gopher by resetting at the same open- 

 ing into a burrow. This was in the early fall, too; not in the mating 

 season. 



NATURAL ENEMIES. Since the pocket gopher so seldom shows itself 

 outside of its subterranean galleries, it has little to fear from the 

 natural enemies of the rodent race. It is not entirely safe from attack, 



