Richardson's spermophile. 65 



onions, horse manure. When we commence working the land in spring 

 they are all over the fields and eat the seed wheat. They come in from 

 all the vacant land about and eat the wheat from the time it has 

 sprouted until 2 inches high ; then they eat the blades. By May 20 or 

 the 1st of June they have a litter of about eight young. They destroy 

 wheat, corn, beans, and dig out flax seed and potatoes. They com- 

 mence cutting down stalks of wheat about June 15 and continue to 

 cut them until ripe ; then they shell out the grain and carry it into their 

 holes. They cut down the prairie grass where there is no grain. At 

 certain times they eat each other when found dead. They are too 

 numerous to count. They have destroyed from 60 to 80 acres of grain 

 for me, and in some places have destroyed 60 per cent of the crop." 



Mr. Elmer T. Judd, writing from Cando, N. Dak., August 1, 1890, 

 gives the following account of the damage done in Towner County and 

 the means adopted for the destruction of this pest: 



"The Richardson's Gopher which I send is one of almost countless 

 numbers which are found in this county. They do a great deal of 

 damage to the crops, commencing their work when the wheat and other 

 grain are sowed, and continuing until after they are harvested. They dig 

 up the seed and then eat the young shoots. During a dry spell they 

 simply cut the stalks off for the moisture there is in them, and when 

 the grain is nearly ripe they commence breaking down and picking the 

 grain from the heads. 



" Some farmers calculate they can make wages killing gophers in the 

 extra amount of wheat they get at harvesting time. An old gentle- 

 man here, familiarly known as * Grandpa Main,' who is in the neigh- 

 borhood of 60 years of age, killed 1,500 gophers by actual count before 

 the 1st of June, many of which he opened and found to contain from 5 

 to 7 young. From about the 1st of June until the middle of July this 

 man and a cotton broker from St. Louis, Mo., who spends the summer 

 here on his farm, calculated that they had killed over 2,500 more. One 

 afternoon they killed 135, as shown by the tails they had captured. 

 This shows the number of gophers one man could destroy if he paid 

 strict attention to the business. The above 4,000 gophers were killed 

 on and around the outer edges of one section of land — 1 square mile." 



Prof. O. B. Waldron, arboriculturist of the North Dakota Agricul- 

 tural College and Experiment Station, reports that in eastern North 

 Dakota this spermophile has extended its range considerably to the 

 south and east during recent years, and has become much more abun- 

 dant than formerly, while at the same time Franklin's Spermophile 

 has decreased in the same area, the inference being that the latter 

 is being driven out by Richardson's Spermophile, as the brown rat 

 has driven away the black rat and the red fox the gray fox over 

 large areas. Prof. Waldron says: "At Amenia, Cass County [N. 

 Dak.], SpermopMlus richardsoni first appeared in 1887 and has since 

 4032— No. 4 5 



