ANIMAL PESTS AND DISEASES. 
The pocket gopher is a serious pest in the alfalfa 
field. In many western states it is indeed a most 
serious menace. In all the non-irrigated parts of 
California the gopher cuts short the life of an al- 
falfa field. Irrigation stops their work, but irriga- 
tion is not always possible. T. J. Headlee of the 
lxansas experiment station thus discusses the gopher 
and his work in Bulletin 155: 
No other animal attacking the underground parts of alfalfa can 
equal or even closely approach the gopher in destructiveness. 
While the pocket gopher occurs in all parts of the state it is most 
abundant and destructive in the valleys of the Kansas River and 
its main tributaries. The plains pocket gopher (Geomys lutes- 
cens, Merr.) holds sway on the western plains, and the prairie 
pocket gopher (Geomys bursarius, Shaw) infests most of the re- 
mainder of the state. These two species show such a similarity 
in life-habits that for the consideration of methods of combating 
a knowledge of the prairie form will serve for both. 
The prairie pocket gopher is short and stocky, showing an 
average length of about ten inches from the tip of its nose to 
the end of its stubby, hairless tail. Its body is covered with 
silky dark brown hair, its eyes are small and well protected by 
fur, and its ears are so short as hardly to cause a ripple in the 
smooth-lying fur of the head. Its front feet are furnished with 
long, strong claws and otherwise modified for digging. In fact, 
the whole structure of the animal fits it for its subterranean 
existence. 
The gopher tunnels hither and thither in search of food, at 
intervals digging short lateral burrows to the surface through 
which it pushes the excavated earth and dumps it outside, thus 
forming the mounds that indicate its presence and mark its pro- 
gress. These animals are most active during the fall and spring, 
and one individual may throw up several mounds daily for sey- 
eral weeks at a time. During these seasons the work of a few 
gophers in an alfalfa-field may cause the uninitiated to suppose 
(424) 
