326 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louts 
were found in the middle of a well-beaten road, where 
the earth was so hard packed as to be almost impenetra- 
ble with ordinary tools. ‘A spading-fork, a digging-trowel 
and a pruning-knife each in turn proved ineffectual in 
the conquest, and only by the aid of a hatchet was I 
finally able to follow a very few burrows to their termini. 
The work was rendered increasingly difficult by the fact 
that the nests were in the beaten track, and at the ap- 
proach of each automobile or wagon it was necessary for 
the perspiring investigator to take flight to a safe dis- 
tance to escape the wrath of the irate drivers who seemed 
not to appreciate the beauty of the quest of truth when 
it led to the digging of chuck-holes in their roadway. At 
Lake View the road leading to a country club was beaten 
so hard by the automobile traffic that I could not dig up a 
single nest. At Jerseydale the yellow clay was very 
sticky when wet and flinty when dry, and at Wicks (fig. 
28) the admixture of clay and rocks rendered digging 
most difficult. At the two latter places, however, a few 
nests were found at the side of the road which could be 
dug out to sufficient depths to learn some details of their 
interiors. 
The mouth of the hole is always beautiful in its sym- 
metry; it is 14 inch in diameter, and around the aperture 
is a mound of chips or granules of earth which have been 
brought up from below (see fig. 29; a ten-cent coin nearby 
shows the relative size). The burrow is amply large; 
the diameter is sufficient to permit the occupant easily to 
turn around or even to make her toilet while within. The 
tunnel is long and tortuous. In the places where rocks 
are present in the soil this is, of course, the logical re- 
sult, but the same condition exists to an extreme degree 
in clear soils also. The illustration (fig. 30, %4 nat. size) 
gives an idea of the rambling course of one of these chan- 
