THE IBEIQATION AGE. 



177 



These, in a natural state, have no requirement for 

 water, but interfere with their mode of living, and the 

 "drink habit" is engendered. 



It is not generally known that the prairie dog mi- 

 grates. He certainly does, and a la defaulting cashiers, 

 between two days. 



Why they migrate is not due to lack of food or 

 molestation. It may be that sanitary conditions demand 

 a change, or that the inhabitants "see snakes" too often, 

 these being more numerous in dead than in live towns. 

 But the owls follow the dogs. 



A strange spectacle could we but witness it : This 

 dog army hurrying along in the darkness, followed by 

 their little, winged friends, all eager and fearful, trying 

 to make the promised land, and get underground before 

 daylight, and what a thrill pervades the ranks when 

 from some nearby hill the coyote's shriek is heard ! 



Often these journeys cover several miles, and the 

 new home, suitable to requirements, may be hidden from 

 the old country by intervening hills. 



up a constant yipping from morning till night, and 

 from the oldest to the youngest all stood on their little 

 hillocks and looked across at us. 



Curiosity is not a marked trait of the prairie dog. 

 We wondered at this attention to our side. 



One night it came on intensely dark. The wind 

 tnat for several days had been blowing hard, sank too 

 low to awaken the faintest night-song from the trees, 

 and in this darkness and silence a strange thing was 

 happening. 



Next morning we commented on the unusual silence 

 of our over-river neighbors. Not a sound came from 

 them and the town had a deserted air. 



The road to our work lay down the bottom. 



Scarcely had we gone half a mile before we were 

 in the midst of a dog town not there the night before ! 



Everywhere around us rose hillocks; some just 

 started, others of the usual size. Behind these, here and 

 there, little round-headed sentinels peered out of the 

 newly made holes. 





Farmers in Twin 



What power unerringly guides them to the right 

 place? Xo scouts have been sent out to look up the new 

 town, and as pedestrians the odds are against prairie 

 dogs. 



Some years since I was on the engineering depart- 

 ment of the Northern Pacific Eailway, and camped near 

 the Greenhorn Bluffs on the Yellowstone. Below us 

 the foothills swung out' to the south, making a smooth 

 meadow-like bottom which extended along the river for 

 perhaps a mile. 



The stream here was about one thousand feet wide 

 and on its high opposite bank was a large dog town. 



The June rise was on. Every day the dark-brown 

 flood hurried its rafts of driftwood or ground unceas- 

 ingly at the banks. At night with the many sounds 

 of the day stilled we could hear the rounded stones on 

 the river's bottom the Yellowstone grinding its mid- 

 summer grist. 



For days the dogs had been unsually noisy, keeping 



Falls, Idaho. 



There had been an exodus from somewhere, that was 

 plain; and as the town across the river was evidently 

 deserted, little proof was wanting to establish the 

 identity of the newcomers. 



This proof was found along the river. The cross- 

 ing had not been without loss, as was evidenced by many 

 a little stranded form. 



As the town was making there was about it a sug- 

 gestion of divisions, or districts. 



It may have been that, like the Israelites of old, 

 each tribe tented by itself, but, as the days went by, and 

 the little engineers advanced their works by gallery and 

 uprise, these lines of demarkation faded and were finally 

 lost to us, although likely enough discernible to the 

 dogs. 



I often indulge the fancy that the owl is sent out 

 to look up the new home. I hear the grave and anxious 

 consultations following his report, and see him, like an- 

 other Moses, leading the way. Why not? 



