246 GNAWING ANIMALS 



claws like burglar's tools on each fore foot and a most villain- 

 ous countenance and temper, you may know that it is a 

 Pocket Gopher. The pockets in his cheeks are to enable him 

 to carry extra large quantities of stolen potatoes and seeds. 

 When once you have learned the true character and habits 

 of this creature, you will, without being asked, carefully re- 

 frain from calling any ground squirrel a "Gopher." 



Most wild animals have some redeeming qualities, but 

 this cannot make good a claim to one. Gophers are not 

 only thieves and robbers, but they are so ill-tempered that 

 they even hate each other, and the old ones usually are 

 found living alone. When two captives are placed together, 

 they usually fight fiercely until one is killed. Their teeth 

 and front claws are very powerful, and working together 

 they do great damage, in many different ways. 



As a family, Pocket Gophers inhabit the whole United 

 States west of Indiana and the lower Mississippi, and also 

 a large part of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Three genera 

 and about thirty-three species are recognized, and while 

 some are smaller than others, and some are gray or black' 

 instead of brown, their appetites and habits are all equally 

 objectionable. They spoil meadows by throwing up innu- 

 merable hillocks of loose earth ; they devour great quanti- 

 ties of vegetable crops, and also corn and small' grain; they 

 eat the roots of young fruit-trees of nearly all kinds, and they 

 destroy canals and irrigating ditches by honeycombing their 

 banks. With incisor teeth that in sharpness and strength 

 are like steel chisels, a Gopher can pare off all the roots from 

 a young tree quite as neatly as a man pares potatoes. 



