POISONING AND TRAPPING 309 



be just large enough to receive the trap and 

 should be covered so as almost to exclude the 

 light. Scalding the trap frequently to remove 

 the animal odor is important. 



"A few days' experience will teach one more about 

 setting traps for gophers than pages of directions 

 could. He must not be discouraged by failure at 

 first, but vary the method of setting the trap until he 

 learns the best way for his locality. While the 

 method is somewhat slow, persistent trapping steadily 

 decreases the pests until the last gopher on a farm 

 may be captured. A correspondent of the Biological 

 Survey writes that he caught 1,332 of the animals 

 within 2 miles of his home. A friend of the writer 

 in Kansas trapped 350 gophers on a 40-acre clover 

 field in four months. A California newspaper stated 

 that in the spring of 1901 a man near Watsonville, 

 by using 52 traps, caught 233 in twenty-four and 

 one-half hours. William Burniece, of Bowbells, N. 

 Dak., trapped more than 1,500 gophers on his quar- 

 ter section during a single year." 



Snares and Traps for Rabbits. Babbits are 

 easily trapped or snared, and few farmer-boys 

 need instruction how to do it. An improve- 

 ment upon the figure-four and similar traps 

 is widely used in the West, and known by the 

 name of its inventor, Fred Wellhouse, of To- 



