CHAPTER VII 
THE GRAY GOPHERS 
Tuts brings us to another group of burrow- 
ing and pouched rodents, which, however, are 
far from harmless—the gophers. This term is 
given in the Gulf States to a burrowing turtle, 
and in the Northwest to a striped ground- 
squirrel, but those here in view are the chunked, 
short-legged, blunt-nosed, short-tailed ground- 
diggers of the family Geomyide. 
They inhabit nearly the whole of the open 
country west of the Mississippi river not lifted 
into mountain ranges, and one species, locally 
called salamander (Geomys tuza), occupies 
large areas in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. 
The western plains are the home of two promi- 
nent species, the dark ‘common’? one ( Geomys 
bursarius), formerly spread as far east of the 
Mississippi as the prairies extended and now 
dwelling between that river and the Rocky 
Mountains from near the Canadian line to the 
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