l68 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



sixteenths ot an inch in diameter. The common wild gooseberry 

 is also on the list, and wild plums too are found in some places, but 

 are not so common as other fruit. As for grasses, I will mention 

 only a couple of varieties. One is the common sweet grass that 

 Indians make fancy articles out of. It is one of the worst pests a 

 farmer can have, it will form a dense mass of roots and choke out 

 crops. Its roots are like common white string ; a piece of it is apt to 

 get carried some distance with the harrows and thus starts a fresh 

 spot. It is a very hard grass to get rid of The spear grass is another 

 very bad pest. Its seeds are like oats, except that the hull finishes 

 up in a long stiff bristle about three inches long; this bristle has 

 teeth all pointing to its outer end, When a person is walking where 

 this grass is these seeds drop and the big end, which has very sharp 

 point at its base, enters the clothes and the long bristles serve to 

 force the seed ahead. It will weave itself in and out of the cloth in 

 a peculiar manner, every movement serving to send it ahead. To 

 get it out it has to be forced through frontwards, like a barbed hook. 

 Sheep have been butchered and after their hides were taken off the 

 carcasses found to be a mass of scars and the skin full of the spears. 



Zoology — The first animal to be noticed is the troublesome 

 gopher. It is similar to the prairie dog. It lives in the ground and 

 depends on the farmer for its living. They are about as big as a 

 squirrel, but have a small tail like the chipmunk, and are a yellowish 

 gray color. Their claws are made for digging. These pests 

 multiply at a fearful rate and destroy lots of grain. The farmers have 

 to fight them with poison, dogs, guns and any means possible. 

 They store away immense quantities of grain for winter use. 



The badger is another animal that lives in the earth. In some 

 parts the farmers protect them as they are said to live amost entirely 

 on the gophers ; others, myself among them, object to them on ac- 

 count of the holes they dig while going down after a gopher. They 

 dig a regular post hole and many a good horse has been hurt by 

 getting a leg in one of these holes on a dark night. A favorite spot 

 for them to dig is right in the middle of the trail, the most dangerous 

 spot they could dig on account of the trafific across the country. 

 We also have skunks. I have never chased one to its den so I can- 

 not say where they live, but judging from their claws I should think 

 they lived underground. 



