ZOOLOGY. 119 
They go considerable distances to fields; and the traveller. 
whose approach scares them, sees them in hundreds running 
across the road before him, with their tails erect, hurrying 
from the field to hide themselves in their burrows. Many a 
large wheat-field, which would have yielded forty bushels to 
the acre if there.had been no spermophiles to trouble it, is so 
despoiled by them, that the crop will not pay for harvesting. 
They are particularly abundant in the Santa Clara, Amador, 
and Pajaro valleys; and their number is an important consid- 
eration in the estimate of the price of land. They will not 
live in moist land, nor very near the ocean, where the fogs 
prevail. They are poisoned with strychnine and phosphorus, 
drowned by irrigation, and shut out by tight board-fences. 
In wet winters many of them are drowned; after a dry winter 
they are always numerous. Away from cultivated fields they 
depend for food chiefly upon grass-seeds, grass-roots, and 
acorns. 
The. Californian gopher (Zhomomys bulbivorus) is, next to 
Beechey’s spermophile, the nost abundant and most trouble- 
some rodent of the state. When full grown, it has a body six 
or eight inches long, with a tail of two inches. The back and 
sides are of a chestnut-brown color, paler on the under parts 
of the body and legs; the tail and feet are grayish-white; the 
ears are very short. In the cheeks are large pouches, covered 
with fur inside, white to their margin, which is dark-brown. 
The gopher inhabits the fertile valleys of the coast from lati- 
tude 34° to 39°. He spends nearly all his time under ground, 
and does most of his mischief there, gnawing off the roots of 
fruit-trees and garden vegetables, eating newly-sown grain 
and seeds, and nibbling at flowers and sweet bulbs. He is not 
a climber, nor is he very agile: if he gets into a trench eight 
inches wide and a foot deep, with perpendicular sides, he will 
run a long distance in it rather than clamber out; and one of 
the best methods of catching him is’ to make such a trench 
round a field, and place square tin boxes, fifteen inches deep, 
eight inches square, and open at the top, in the bottom of the 
