502 desi:e,t plants as a source of drinking water. 



peccaries live for months at a time without possible access to natural 

 Yv^ater. It is evident from their habit of rooting in the ground like the 

 domestic hog, that they derive some of their requisite moisture from 

 the underground portions of plants, while another source of moisture 

 is the fruit of opuntia and other cactuses. 



Mr. T. S. Van Dyke, in an article on the mule deer," says: 



When on this food [cactus] deer not only can go without water, but often go 

 without it when it is perfectly convenient. On the great ^lexican desert known as 

 the Bolsor. de Mapimi, I hunted for several weeks in 1884, stopping at a railroad 

 station 25 miles from anywhere, and known to be 25 miles from any other water. 

 Several hundred feet from the station the leakage from the water cars of the railroad 

 made a shallow pond some 50 feet long and a dozen wide. To the leeward of tliis 

 fresh tracks of deer could be found almost any morning, all near enough to smell 

 the water, but not one of them going to it. I had plenty of other most i>ositive 

 proof tliat the deer there, as well as the antelope, did not go to water, though the 

 days were hot enough to make a man want water as much as in midsummer. For 

 many a league there was no green feed except some of the varieties of cactus, and 

 every deer and antelope that I opened in this vicinity was filled with it. The same 

 is true in parts of Sonora and in much of Lower California. 



This statement is confirmed by Mr. E. W. Nelson, the American 

 naturalist most widelv experien(;ed in Mexican travel and observation, 

 to whom similar instances are well known. 



Various authentic records exist regarding the almost incredible 

 abstinence of some of the small desert rodents of the southwestern 

 United States. Mr. Vernon Bailey, of the United States Biological 

 Survey, informs me that he kept a desert jumping mouse {3fl<rodlj)o- 

 dops megacephaliis) for more than a month, during which period it ate 

 only drv seeds and grain. After it had become very tame he placed 

 water before it, but it would not drink. When the dish was elevated 

 until the water touched the end of its nose, the animal showed everv 

 sign of ignorance of the liquid and even repugnance to it. Mr. F. Ste- 

 phens, of Santa Ysabel, California, has recorded the statement* that he 

 had a pet of the gray pocket mouse {Perognathus fallax) which drank 

 no water in the six months during which it had been in his possession; 

 that it would not touch water and did not seem to know what water was, 

 and that it would not eat green food. He states also that Mr. W. G. 

 Wright, of San Bernardino, California, had a captive specimen of the 

 tuft-tailed pocket mouf^e{Pero(/nathuspemet7lafus) which had no drink 

 and no food save dry grain for more than two years. Dr. J. A. Allen, 

 of the American Museum of Natural History, states^ that a pocket 

 mouse from western Texas {Pet'ognathns merrimni) had been kept for 

 nearly three years without water, his food during that period consist- 

 ing exclusively of dr}^ mixed birdseed. The domicile of the animal 



uln The Deer Family, by Theodore Roosevelt and others, pp. 193-194, 1902. 

 & West American Scientist, Vol. VII, p. 38, 1890. 



f Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. VIII, p. 58, 1896; 

 American Naturalist, Vol. XXXII, pp. 58.3-584. 1898. 



