CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTIA. 



435 



The forage is carefully cleaned in their burrows, and the husks and chaff carried out. When all 

 is in order, they stop up the entrance and prepare for their hibernation, which lasts during the 

 whole of the severe weather ; the provision they have made having been collected for the pur- 

 pose of their support before their torpidity actually commences, and also in the spring before 

 there is a supply for them in the fields. If all tales be true, they are a bold generation, and 

 will jump at a horse if he tread near them, and hang by his nose so as to be disengaged with 

 difficulty. Their voice is said to be like the barking of a dog. Fierce as they are, they quail 

 before their deadly enemy the polecat, which, chasing them into their holes, destroys them un- 

 relentingly. Notwithstanding this check, they are so numerous in some seasons, in some places, 

 as to occasion a dearth of corn. The fur of the animal is said to be valuable ; and the peasant, 

 when he goes "hamster-nesting" in the winter, not only possesses himself of the skin of the plun- 

 derer, but of the plunder, which sometimes amounts to two bushels of good grain in a single 

 magazine. Buffon, quoting Sulzer, says that in Gotha, in Germany, where these animals were 

 proscribed by the government, over 80,000 were captured in a single year. 



Beside this notorious species other hamsters are found in Europe and Asia, as the C. arenarius, 

 C. phcetis, C. accedula, and, according to Brandt, C. nigricans. The Canada pouched-rat, S. 

 bursarius, which we have described at page 415, is erroneously considered a hamster by Desma- 

 rest and F. Cuvier, who give it the title of Cricetus bursarius. 



A GERBIL. 



Genus GERBILLUS : Gerbillus.—Of this genus there are more than twenty species, all 

 belonging to the Eastern Continent. They are somewhat rat-like in appearance, but are noted 

 for the elegance of their forms, the length of their tail and hind-legs, and the lightness of their 

 movements. Some live in cultivated districts ; all burrow in the earth, where they hoard up pro- 

 visions, and all are nocturnal in their habits. Their general color is lawn. 



The Herine Gerbil, G. Indicus, confined to India, is eight or nine inches long, of a grayish 

 fawn above, irregularly mixed with black ; below it is white. It establishes itself in burrows 

 near the grain fields, where it collects immense stores of barley and wheat, to "which it has re- 

 course during the dry season when the country is destitute of vegetation. # It has, in common 

 with several of the genus, an offensive smell. 



Other species are the Tamaris Gerbil, G. tamariscinus, inhabiting the coasts of the Cas- 

 pian; the Southern Gerbil, G. meridiamis, the Mus longipes of Pallas, found in Southern Rus- 

 'sia; the G. opimus, found in Europe and Asia, in the region of the Caspian ; the G. otarius, found 



