122 ANIMAL COMPETITORS 
This implies that the damage done is largely 
the result of neglect on the farmer’s part. 
The gopher as a soil-maker. In view of 
this record of harmfulness (due, of course, 
simply to mankind trying to modify nature for 
his own ends in the path of the animal’s natural 
way of living, so that from nature’s point of 
view the cultivator is the aggressor and the 
gopher merely defending himself and living off 
the enemy), it is only fair to point out how the 
animal, throughout the history of the species, 
has been laying the present farmer and ranch- 
man under his debt. 
‘“‘Hor unknown ages,’’ declares Dr. C. Hart 
Merriam, in the monograph already referred 
to, ‘‘the gophers have been steadily at work 
plowing the ground, covering deeper and 
deeper the vegetable matter, loosening the soil, 
draining the land, and slowly but surely cul- 
tivating and enriching it.’’ 
Ernest Thompson Seton illustrates this 
statement very forcibly by the example of 
Manitoba,—one of the richest soil-areas in the 
world—where, as elsewhere in northwestern 
