ALONG FOUR-FOOTED TRAILS 



for generations, with but one ambition, to eat and 

 store away food ? They never give or receive a 

 kind act from one another, never have their na- 

 tures softened by true friendship or loving com- 

 panions. Their eyes as well as their natures 

 are small and weak. Gophers seek nothing 

 but the underground halls and galleries running 

 in all directions, except it be the stores of food, 

 packed away in the large chambers which they 

 excavate for that purpose and which are generally 

 more than they can possibly use. They shun 

 the sunlight in which so many of their prairie 

 neighbors bask and thoroughly enjoy. They 

 seek the darkest recesses of their homes for 

 rest and repose and work diligently to exclude 

 any stray ray of light that might by accident 

 enter one of their halls. Gloomy, solitary and 

 vicious, this underground dweller and lover of 

 darkness spends his life and fills his mission in 

 fertilizing the more or less barren hillsides of 

 the prairie, changing in some slight degree the 

 surface of the earth, through the action of 

 the rain upon their discarded homes. In 

 time they often cause deep ruts and gullies 

 and in many ways are both a hindrance as 



