104. ACROSS MONGOLIAN PLAINS 



can well believe it, for the marmots have many curious 

 habits which would repay close study. The dance could 

 hardly be a mating performance since Mac saw it in 

 late May and by that time the young had already been 

 born. 



One morning at the "Marmot Camp/' as we named 

 the one where we first began real collecting, Yvette saw 

 six or seven young animals on top of a mound in the 

 green grass. We went there later with a gun and found 

 the little fellows playing like kittens, chasing each other 

 about and rolling over and over. It was hard to make 

 myself bring tragedy into their lives, but we needed 

 them for specimens. A group showing an entire mar- 

 mot family would be interesting for the Museum ; espe- 

 cially so in view of their reported connection with the 

 pneumonic plague. We collected a dozen others before 

 the summer was over to show the complete transition 

 from the first yellow coat to the gray-brown of winter. 



Like most rodents, the marmots grow rapidly and 

 have so many young in every litter that they will not 

 soon be exterminated in Mongolia unless the native 

 hunters obtain American steel traps. Even then it 

 would take some years to make a really alarming impres- 

 sion upon the millions which spread over all the plains 

 of northern Mongolia and Manchuria. 



Since these marmots are a distinctly northern animal 

 they are a great help in determining the life zones of 

 this part of Asia. We found that their southern limit 

 is at Turin, one hundred and seventy-five miles from 

 Urga. A few scattered families live there, but the real 



