Sappers and Miners 



fact that some of them lead vertically upwards to the 

 open air. 



By far the commonest of our British burrowers is the 

 rabbit. His home is too well known, and he himself is 

 so familiar, that there is little need to describe his work 

 in any detail. Like the Arctic fox we have just mentioned, 

 and the prairie dog we are about to describe, the rabbit 

 is of social habits. Their warrens are formed in any spot 

 where the soil is suitable for digging, and where they 

 have a reasonable chance of being unmolested. The 

 home of this common animal comprises a living chamber 

 in which the young are reared and, approaching thereto, 

 is a veritable labyrinth of tunnels, the inevitable bolt hole 

 never being omitted. 



The prairie dog, which, by the way, is not a dog, but 

 is so called on account of its peculiar little yelp, dwells 

 with its friends and relations in a village. A village, be 

 it said, is merely a warren, a plot of land riddled in every 

 direction by the tunnels of these little creatures, and 

 altered in appearance by the earth mounds which they 

 throw up at the mouths of their burrows. 



The work of the prairie dog is not carried out at 

 haphazard, as is apparently the case with the common 

 fox and the rabbit, but is modelled on a definite plan. 

 Each burrow enters the earth at an angle of about forty- 

 five degrees and runs downwards for five feet or more ; 

 then it turns suddenly almost at a right angle and ends 

 in a chamber, the home of the prairie dog, which is often 

 shared by the burrowing owl and the rattlesnake, to the 

 undoing of the young prairie dogs. Usually there is a 

 bolt hole, but not invariably. Well-worn paths run 

 from the entrance of one burrow to another, for the 

 " dogs " are very sociable and constantly visit one another. 



Their villages cover enormous areas in the arid wastes 

 of North America ; in fact these animals can live in 

 districts absolutely devoid of water. Towards autumn 

 all is quiet in the village, the little yelping sentinels, 



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