LUTHER BURBANK 



tried and given up. Attempts to smoke out the 

 animals proved ineffective, as the gopher instantly 

 builds a wall to shut out the smoke. 



Bisulphid of carbon, which gives off a poison- 

 ous, heavy gas, was tested with equal lack of suc- 

 cess. About the only resource was the use of 

 poison, commonly called strychnin, placed on a 

 piece of apple, potato, or carrot, combined with the 

 use of a wire trap, in the hope that if one failed 

 the other might prove effective. But in spite of 

 all these methods the gophers multiplied, mostly 

 from neighboring fields, where their damage to 

 ordinary farm crops was not so marked. A few 

 years ago, however, a gopher gun was invented 

 that practically solved the problem. This consists 

 of a trap so arranged that when the gopher pokes 

 his nose against the trigger a charge of powder 

 explodes beneath the animal, killing him instantly 

 by concussion. 



This device proved more effective than all 

 others. Sometimes 35 or 40 gophers were destroyed 

 in a day about the borders of my gardens. And 

 in a short time the gophers were so nearly exter- 

 minated that they ceased to be a pest. 



When these old enemies of the bulbous plants 

 were thus finally subjugated, after years of effort, 

 I determined to take up again the cultivation 

 of the gladiolus. 



[186] 



