130 The Pocket Gopher. 



times a year. Farmers who work land under the ditch tell me 

 that the flooding process frequently drives the gopher to the 

 surface to escape drowning. A few such experiences prob- 

 ably discourage the animals so that they do not establish them- 

 selves permanently in the alfalfa and sugar-beet fields. Out- 

 side the irrigated tracts there is very little foqd supply except 

 that provided by nature; hence the numbers of the species 

 remain about the same from year to year. It is interesting 

 to note in this connection that the western agricultural ant 

 (Pogonomyrmex occidentalis) is more successful in maintain- 

 ing a permanent residence on irrigated lands than the pocket 

 gopher. The latter establishes itself permanently only on the 

 uncultivated tracts of wild land and along fences and ditches. 

 It prefers the loose soil of the sand-hills and gravel flats to the 

 harder clayey soils covered by buffalo-grass. 



Damage to Ditches. Of course the gopher causes consider- 

 able annoyance in the irrigated districts by its excursions into 

 the fields from its retreats along the fences and ditches. Its 

 habit of burrowing into the banks of the ditches is most ex- 

 asperating to the farmer who, when he turns the water on, 

 must often spend hours locating and stopping leaks. These 

 leaks, enlarged by erosion of the water, may cause considerable 

 loss to the farmer himself or result in damage suits from his 

 neighbors. The water escaping in this way also softens up 

 stretches of the public roads so as to make them impassable. 



Results of Floods. During the great flood of 1903 in the 

 valleys of the Kansas and its tributaries the flood-plains of 

 many streams were inundated from bluff to bluff. At this time 

 observers noted hundreds of pocket gophers on the higher 

 points of land above water and along railroad embankments. 

 An observer near Manhattan killed 180 of the animals with a 

 club. For a year or so after the floods the lowlands were com- 

 paratively free from gophers, but they are fast reoccupying 

 the flats and regaining their original numbers. 



GOPHER LEGISLATION. 



The sentiment which always looks to legislative enactment 

 for a remedy for all remediable evils has crystallized into two 

 recent gopher laws in Kansas the one a compulsory extermi- 

 nation law, the other a bounty law. The former was enacted 

 by the session of 1905 ; the latter is a part of the grist from 

 the mill of our last legislature in its regular session. 



