v THE BADGER AND HIS KIN 143 
animals, from the badger down to the mouse and 
lizard, who cannot migrate, it becomes a case, 
literally, of ‘Root, hog, or die!” Shelter must 
be had, and as the only shelter possible is beneath 
the ground, every creature that cannot get away 
in the fall digs a hole in which to pass the winter. 
When human pioneers decide to brave a winter on 
the plains they do substantially the same thing, and 
for the same reason; for an Oklahoma “dugout” 
is scarcely more than a burrow, furnished with 
skins and cloth instead of grass and leaves; and 
both boomers and gophers find these homes beneath 
the sod highly serviceable against the heats and 
dust-storms of summer, as well as against the blasts 
and snows of winter. 
In plainer language, then, no resident mammals, 
with a few rare and partial exceptions, can make 
their homes upon the open plains of our West, or 
on the pampas of South America, on the Karoo of 
southern or the Sahara of northern Africa, or 
the steppes of Russia or Central Asia, unless they 
have acquired the knowledge and power of bur- 
rowing. It is probable that in all stages of the 
globe’s development, since land animals began to 
roam upon it, at least, there have been wide areas 
devoid of forest, and these were no doubt inhab- 
ited from the beginning, inasmuch as some of the 
earliest mammalian forms of which we have any 
traces seem by their structure to have been adapted 
to this manner of life. It is, moreover, almost 
