PLAINS GOPHER. 



39 



ing of the bay by inequalities of surface caused by tbeir mounds. Grain fields are 

 much injured by them while tbe plants are growing; and when the stacks are left 

 standing after harvest, the Gophers burrow from below, and frequently cut up and 

 drag into their holes, or otherwise completely destroy, entire sheaves. All root 

 crops suffer severly from them. In passing below the surface, they gnaw the bot- 

 toms of carrots, beets, turnips, and other tap-rooted vegetables, without disturbing 

 the tops or coming above ground. In fields of common and sweet potatoes, they 

 work under the hills and remove the tubers, and thus sometimes destroy half or 

 more of the crop before the dying vines give evidence of the mischief. Instances 

 are related in which potato heaps, covered with earth and left out during winter, 

 have been entered by the Gophers and the tubers carried off. They sometimes enter 

 melons, pumpkins, and squashes, through holes at the bottom, and eat out all the 

 fleshy part, and then fill the hollow rind with earth, leaving it in a condition to 

 create much astonishment when harvested. They also feed upon bark of the roots 

 of trees, as well as upon the fleshy roots of herbaceous plants. Some of our prairie 

 farmers are greatly injured by their destruction of Osage-orange hedges. No small 

 item of their injury is the gnawing and cutting off the roots of fruit trees. A con- 

 siderable portion of all the trees have been killed annually in some young orchards 

 in Iowa and Illinois ; and several fruit growers inform me that they have seen as 

 many as a dozen large bearing apple trees killed by them in a single orchard. 

 Forest trees, 6 or 8 inches in diameter, have died in consequence of their roots being 

 cut. (Report of Commissioner of Patents for 1857, p. 76, 1858.) 



Contents of seven stomachs of Geomys oursarius. 



Cata- 

 logue 

 tfo. 



Sex. 



Date. 



Locality. 



Percent- 

 age of 

 animal 

 matter. 



Percent- 

 age of 

 vegetable 

 matter. 



Contents. 



22 

 58 



I 



1887. 

 May 28 



June 10 

 do 



Flandreau, S. Dak 





100 

 100 

 100 

 100 

 100 

 100 



11 large parasitic stomach 

 Avorms; no food. 



59 ; d 



60 ? 

 69 ? 



76 : v 



. do 





Do 



....do ... 

 June 17 

 June 22 

 Julv 6 



do 





Do. 







Do. 









122 



? 



Travare, S. Dak 





Finely chewed roots. 



habits of the plains pocket gopher (Geomys lutescens). 



The Plains Gopher, as its name implies, inhabits the semiarid plains 

 instead of the fertile prairies. Its range is west and southwest of that 

 of the Prairie Gopher, and it is not found north of southern South 

 Dakota. It is common throughout the sandhills of western Nebraska 

 and Kansas, and reaches into eastern Wyoming and Colorado. It is 

 much paler than the Prairie species, its color closely matching that of the 

 pale sand in which it is usually found. In habits it differs but little from 

 the foregoing. Being considerably smaller, its burrows and hills are 

 correspondingly smaller, so that in the western part of its range, where 

 it meets the Gray Gopher {Thomomys talpoides), it is hard to tell from 

 the size of the hills which species made them. On the contrary, the 

 hills of the Gray and Prairie Gophers {Thomomys talpoides and Geomys 

 bursarius) are easily distinguished by the difference in size. 



In western Nebraska, where the light sand is constantly drifting into 

 dunes and ridges that border the fertile valleys, the Gophers fairly 



