560 
vicinity of Urbana. They were both dead, and the head of one had 
been eaten off. Persistent trapping in the same vicinity failed to 
give us any others. Collectors throughout all its range agree in 
regard to its remarkable scarcity. ‘The only place, where it seems 
to have been even moderately abundant is in the vicinity of Brook- 
ville, Indiana, and about the only observations we have on its habits 
were made by Quick and Butler* at that place. They found it 
most numerous on hillsides in high, dry blue-grass pastures, where 
stones are irregularly scattered over the surface. Our specimens 
were found on a low bluff overlooking a creek, in pasture-land where 
there were stumps and scattered trees. However, the dead animals 
may have been merely brought there. Other collectors have taken 
them from swamps—wet or dried-up—and from spruce woods, 
Sphagnum bogs, ete. 
Owuick and Butler say that these animals breed from February 
to December; and that the nests, made of soft dry grass, are always 
under cover, often in hollow logs or stumps. 
The food of Cooper’s lemming is entirely vegetable so far as 
known, consisting of stems and roots of grass and other plants. The 
form of its incisors would seem to prevent it from eating nuts or 
hard-shelled seeds. It stores up various kinds of roots for winter. 
Its numbers are said to vary greatly at Brookville from year to 
year. 
POCKET-GOPHER. 
Geomys bursaritus (Shaw). 
Mus bursarius Shaw, Trans. Linn. Soc., V., 1800, pp. 227-228, Pl. 8. 
This animal derives its name from the pockets in its cheeks. 
They are lined with fur and open on the outside. Its total length 
is about 10.85 in..(275 mm.). The tail is 3.34 in. (85 mm) one 
The color is nearly chestnut above and below, but paler on the belly. 
The feet are whitish. 
The pocket-gopher is found in the prairie region of Illinois, in the 
southern half of Wisconsin, in Minnesota very nearly up to the 
Canadian border, in the eastern part of the Dakotas and Nebraska, 
and in northeastern Kansas and Missouri. It is strictly an inhabit- 
ant of the prairie throughout this range. 
* Am. Naturalist, Vol. XILX.,9pp, 113,114, 115, 116 isis: 
