268 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



vegetables often cover many of the plants and do much harm. They 

 also sometimes cause horses to stumble, injuring and perhaps killing 

 both horses and riders. 1 Their mounds also cause losses by prevent- 

 ing close cutting of hay crops. Their burrows cause erosion on steep 

 slopes and costly breaks in reservoir dams and canal banks. They attack 

 the roots of trees, the injuries causing crown gall, the damage be- 

 ing underground and usually not detected until too late, 40 trees 

 having been ruined in one orchard in a single week. 2 Dalles pocket 

 gophers (T. quadratus) , in a badly infested Oregon cherry orchard, 

 killed 71 per cent of the trees and injured another 21 per cent beyond 

 recovery, leaving only 8 per cent uninjured. 3 Three gophers in twelve 

 days threw up 103 mounds. 4 



Pocket gophers are occasional hosts of the spotted fever ticks, 5 Their 

 habits are clean and their flesh is used as food in some localities. 6 They 

 subsist chiefly on roots and green plants and sometimes girdle trees, 

 the annual loss to farmers and fruit growers because of their opera- 

 tions having been estimated at more than $i2,ooo,ooo. 7 The annual loss 

 in Nebraska alone was estimated at $i, 000,000. 8 Though it has often 

 been said that pocket gophers are strictly vegetarian, like most rodents 

 they occasionally indulge in the flesh of other animals. One in captivity 

 greedily ate meat at every opportunity. 9 Some gophers, placed in a 

 box with deer mice, "ate them all up, beginning with the tails." 10 



The following items concerning the pocket gophers of Texas are 

 briefed from Bailey's report: 11 Louisiana pocket gopher (Geomys bre- 

 viceps), sometimes seriously damages lawns, parks, pastures, fields, 

 gardens and orchards, but is easily controlled by trapping. "Their 

 flesh is sweeter, better flavored and more delicate than any squirrel 

 or rabbit, and their small size is the only objection to their use as 



1 Coues, The prairie gopher, Amer. Naturalist, ix, 147-156, 1875. See Scheffer, 

 Habits and economic status of the pocket gophers, U. S. Dept. Agric. Technical 

 Bull. No. 224, 1931. 



2 Lantz, Pocket gophers as enemies of trees, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 

 1909, pp. 209-218. Bailey, Animal Life of Carlsbad Cavern, p. 91, 1928. Burnett, Office 

 Colorado State Entom. Circular No. 25, p. 15, 1918. 



3 Wight, Breeding habits and economic relations of the Dalles pocket gopher, 

 Journ. Mammalogy, xi, 40-48, 1930. 



4 Bailey, The pocket gophers of the United States, U. S. Div. Orn. and Mamm. 

 Bull. No. 5, 1895. 



5 Birdseye, Farmers' Bull., No. 36, 1912. 



6 Bailey, U. S. Div. Orn. and Mamm. Bull. No. 5, 1895. 



7 Bailey, Farmers' Bull., No. 335, p. 18, 1908; N. Amer. Fauna, No. 49, p. 125, 

 1926. 



8 Bruner, Pocket gophers, Univ. Nebraska Agric. Exper. Sta., Press Bull, No. 

 29, 1908. 



9 Wade, Food habits of a pocket gopher, Journ. Mammalogy, vin, 310-311, 1927. 



10 Mearns, U. S. National Museum Bull. No. 56, p. 411, 1907. 



11 Bailey, Biological survey of Texas, N. Amer. Fauna, No. 25, pp. 127-134, 1905. 



