524 
has something to do with their scarcity. Their enemies are many. 
Although not used as food they are nevertheless victims of the boy 
or the bumpkin with a gun. Many are taken by the larger hawks, 
and cats, weasels, and snakes all help to keep the number down. 
Being largely day-feeders, it is not likely that night-prowlers catch 
many of them, though their remains have been found within the 
stomach of the common screech-owl. 
The chipmunk’s actions show the result of many generations of 
constant peril; and if Burroughs’s statement that he is never more 
than a jump from home be a poetic hyperbole, it is true that he is 
seldom more than one jump from some kind of shelter. In collect- 
ing his food or in his play, he moves by fits and starts from one post 
of observation to another. His curiosity is quite equal to his 
timidity, however,and though he scampers into his hole at the least 
sound or sign of a suspicious object, he is pretty sure to peep out ina 
moment, and the boy with a stone or gun knows that he has only 
to wait a minute for a chance to throw or shoot. 
In the vicinity of cultivated fields a considerable part of the food 
consists of corn and small grain, with occasional meals of berries or 
larger fruit; but the real loss sustained by the farmer is very little, 
for the grain taken is almost entirely waste, gleaned by the industri- 
ous little fellow. If chipmunks should become so numerous as to be 
a pest they are easily trapped, poisoned, or shot. There seems, how- 
ever, little danger of that in this county, and it seems a pity they 
might not be left unmolested. 
STRIPED GOPHER; THIRTEEN-STRIPED SPERMOPHILE. 
Citellus tridecemlineatus (Mitchill). 
Sciurus tridecemlineatus (sic) Mitch., London Med. Repos., N. S., 1821, p. 248. 
Spermophilus tridecemlineatus of Kennicott and various authors. 
This little animal is often called the striped prairie-squirrel, and 
scientists usually prefer the term striped spermophile, since the word 
‘“sopher’’ has been applied to quite a different animal; but the name 
striped gopher is most generally used and best understood. The 
term thirteen-striped designates the most striking feature of its 
appearance. The stripes are made up of six narrow lines of 
dirty yellowish white alternating with sev@én broader dark ones, 
clove-brown in color. These dark stripes are marked by a row of 
