DOG-TOWN DIGGINGS 219 
struck water at three hundred feet, none less 
than this depth. This told that dogs did not 
dig down to water. They are busy diggers 
and have five claws on each foot but they do 
not dig through geological ages to obtain water. 
One day two cowboys came along with a 
shovel which was to be used in setting up a 
circular corral and I excited their interest in 
prairie dog dens. We made the dirt lively for 
two hours but we did not reach bottom. I 
examined old and new gullies by dog towns 
but learned nothing. Finally, a steam shovel 
revealed subterranean secrets. 
This steam shovel was digging a deep rail- 
road cut through a dog town. The dogs barked 
and protested, but railroads have the right of 
way. The holes descended straight and almost 
vertically into the earth to the depth of from 
ten to fourteen feet. From the bottom a tunnel 
extended horizontally for from ten to forty feet. 
There was a pocket or side passage in the 
vertical hole less than two feet below the top: 
and a number of pockets or niches along the 
tunnel with buried excrement in the farther 
end of the tunnel. The side niches were used 
for sleeping places and side tracks. There was 
a network of connecting tubes between the ver- 
tical holes and communicating tunnels between 
the deeper tunnels. 
