THE GRAY GOPHERS 117 
year, in the spring, when two to six young are 
produced in a litter in some roomy central 
chamber made comfortable with dry grass. 
Destructive to crops. ‘‘Throughout their 
range pocket-gophers are very destructive to 
crops. They eat the roots of fruit trees and 
in this way sometimes ruin whole orchards. 
They eat both roots and tops of clover, alfalfa, 
grasses, grains, and vegetables, and are espe- 
cially harmful to potatoes and other tuberous 
crops. Besides this, they throw up innumer- 
able mounds of earth in meadows, pastures, and 
grain fields, which cover and destroy far more 
of the crop than is eaten by the animals or 
killed by having the roots cut off. These 
mounds also prevent close mowing, so that 
much of the hay crop is lost, and the pebbles 
they contain often break or injure farm ma- 
chinery. The loss due to gopher mounds in the 
clover and alfalfa fields in some of the Western 
States has been conservatively estimated at 
one-tenth of the entire crop. In many of the 
fertile valleys where they abound the animals 
are by far the most formidable of the farmer’s 
mammalian enemies. In addition to all this, 
