RODENTIA 269 



a table delicacy." White-throated pocket gopher (G. b. sagittalis): 

 about a dozen "destroyed an orchard of 200 six-year-old fig trees in 

 bearing," by cutting the roots, doing damage to the extent of over $500, 

 which could have been prevented by trapping, instead of attempting 

 to shoot them. Attwater pocket gopher (G. b. attwateri) : in Aransas 

 County "there is hardly a foot of land that has not been 'plowed' 

 several times over by gophers," 250 of which were killed in a pear 

 orchard in six weeks. Chestnut- faced pocket gophers (Cratogeomys 

 castanops) : "their concentration on the best soil, together with the 

 large size of their burrows and mounds, makes them one of the most 

 injurious of the gopher family," but they are easily trapped. Under 

 a cliff "where a pair of horned owls had raised their young ... I 

 counted 20 skulls of Cratogeomys among bones of other rodents, but 

 for fear these owls would catch the chickens one had been killed by 

 the ranchman and the other driven away." Little gray pocket gopher 

 (Thomomys perditus): chief food is yucca, sotal and cactus. Lachu- 

 guilla pocket gopher ( T. lachuguilla) : principal food is the agave. 



Criddle gives lists of plants stored in the dens of the prairie pocket 

 gopher (Thomomys talpoldes rufescens) and says they eat flesh, but 

 few insects, and damage garden and farm crops; and that the long- 

 tailed weasel is their most important mammalian enemy, the badger 

 next, hawks and owls important, coyotes, foxes and skunks not neg- 

 ligible. 12 



Various publications mentioned in the footnotes discuss methods 

 of trapping and other means of controlling the pocket gophers, and 

 include as an important method the encouragement of natural enemies, 

 especially hawks and owls, and sometimes certain predacious mam- 

 mals. There are also some other publications devoted mostly to the 

 subject of suppressing these rodents and otherwise preventing damage 

 by them. 13 



FAMILY HETEROMYIDAE POCKET RATS AND POCKET MICE 



Pocket mice are usually not very numerous and of little economic 

 importance, though occasionally they take some grain, and, if they 



"Criddle, The prairie pocket gopher (Thomomys talpoides rufescens), Journ. 

 Mammalogy, xi, 265-280, 1930. 



13 See Lantz, Methods for destroying pocket gophers, U. S. Biol. Surv. Circular 

 No. 52, 1908. Dixon and De Ong, Control of the pocket gopher in California, Cali- 

 fornia Agric. Exper. Sta. Bull. No. 281, 1917. Dixon, Journ. Mammalogy, in, 136- 

 146, 1922. For the amount of poison required, which depends upon the season, see 

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

 Mammalogy, xi, 40-48, 1930. 



