Notes on some Small Rodents found in North America. 417 



inconsiderable part of the thick coal untouched, while the 

 secondary measures have to be worked over a very large area. 

 Moreover, recent scientific research tends to the conclusion 

 that the thick coal may be reachefl. by penetrating the red 

 (Permian) rocks which have generally been regarded as 

 cutting- off the beds of coal. If these prospects are only 

 realized, and if more scientific methods are introduced into the 

 mining and manufacturing industries of this important locality, 

 the decadence of its prosperity, which now seems ominously 

 near, may be indefinitely postponed. It is to be hoped that 

 the approaching visit of the British Association to the district 

 will have some influence in promoting the application of scien- 

 tific principles to the practical work of this busy centre, and 

 that thus it may be still further proved that science is the 

 handmaid of manufacturing enterprise. 



NOTES ON SOME OF THE SMALLER RODENTS 

 FOUND IN NORTH-WEST AMERICA. 



BY J. K. LOED, E. Z.S.j 

 Late Naturalist to the British North American Boundary Commission. 



High up on the snow-clad summits, and in the deep dark 

 solitary ravines of the Cascade and Rocky Mountains, dwell 

 several curious and interesting animals belonging to the order 

 Rodentia. 



Having spent ten years of my life wandering, trapping, 

 hunting, and collecting specimens of natural history in the 

 wildest solitudes of North- West America, few if any have 

 had more time and opportunity to ^watch the habits of these 

 tiny hermits. 



How often it happens that we get an isolated specimen of 

 some curious animal or bird, and only infer what its habits 

 are by investigating its anatomical structure. It would be 

 difficult, perhaps impossible, to find a group of animals to 

 which this applies with greater force than to the smaller 

 Rodents. Hence it is that I am induced to add my mite to 

 the treasury of science. 



There is a strange, indescribable, mysterious delight in 

 discovery, seeing animals for the first time at home in their 

 native haunts, that before one had vaguely heard or only read 

 of — finding a new species — digging as it were from nature's 

 exhaustless mine, from realms unknown, fresh wonders of 

 Divine handiwork eye had not gazed on before. I shall never 



