GROUND-SQUIRRELS 149 
squirrels they vary their seed-diet with insects. 
It is a relative of these chipmunks, marked by 
thirteen stripes, dark brown on rusty yellow, 
which is known throughout the Northwest, from 
Lake Michigan to Alberta, as the ‘‘striped 
gopher,’’ and as a pest to farmers on account 
of the grain it steals and the runways for water 
its burrows make. Still worse are several 
other northwestern ground-squirrels which 
have plain yellowish-gray coats and are known 
as ‘‘sray gophers,’’ though the term ‘‘gopher’’ 
should be restricted to the Geomys; the most 
familiar is Franklin’s spermophile. 
This graceful animal was originally abundant 
as far south as central Missouri and Illinois, 
but long ago disappeared before the civilizing 
of its prairie home, and now remains numerous 
only in the wilder districts of the Dakotas and 
northward. It is pretty and interesting, but 
too much of an impediment to good agriculture 
to permit the farmer to tolerate it; yet the an- 
imal increases so rapidly under the protective 
and food-supplying conditions which the hu- 
man settlement of the country brings it, that 
its extermination will be a matter of great diffi- 
