THE GRAY GOPHERS 117 



year, in the spring, when two to six young are 

 produced in a litter in some roomy central 

 chamber made comfortable with dry grass. 



Destructive to crops. "Throughout their 

 range pocket-gophers are very destructive to 

 crops. They eat the roots of fruit trees and 

 in this way sometimes ruin whole orchards. 

 They eat both roots and tops of clover, alfalfa, 

 grasses, grains, and vegetables, and are espe- 

 cially harmful to potatoes and other tuberous 

 crops. Besides this, they throw up innumer- 

 able mounds of earth in meadows, pastures, and 

 grain fields, which cover and destroy far more 

 of the crop than is eaten by the animals or 

 killed by having the roots cut off. These 

 mounds also prevent close mowing, so that 

 much of the hay crop is lost, and the pebbles 

 they contain often break or injure farm ma- 

 chinery. The loss due to gopher mounds in the 

 clover and alfalfa fields in some of the Western 

 States has been conservatively estimated at 

 one-tenth of the entire crop. In many of the 

 fertile valleys where they abound the animals 

 are by far the most formidable of the farmer's 

 mammalian enemies. In addition to all this, 



