LITTLE MOUNTAINEERS 



By J. CARTER BEARD 



I, 



What Constitutes a Rodent. 



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begin witli I must 

 confess that before I 

 had a conversation 

 with my friend, Doc- 

 tor Frank Lawrence, 

 on the subject, my 

 idea of what a rodent 

 really is, was some- 

 what indefinite. The occasion of the con- 

 versation to which I refer happened in 

 this way. My friend and I were in the 

 pinyon belt of the Rockies last year,hunt- 

 ing, loafing and enjoying ourselves gen- 

 erally. Among other ways of occupying 

 our time, we took advantage of the rare 

 opportunities offered of studying and 

 of photographing the wild life of the 

 range, east of the Cascade heights in 

 the state of Washington — especially the 

 peculiar rodents to be found there, au- 

 thentic representations of which are by 

 no means common. 



As the doctor was unpacking his kit 

 upon arriving at our new camping 

 ground, he suddenly paused and uttered 

 an exclamation of mingled astonishment 

 and vexation. 



"Great Scott!" he ejaculated, "I 

 thought it was my field glasses." 



What he thought were his 'field glass- 

 es turned out to be the skull of some 

 small animal done up carefully in a 

 copy of the New York Herald. 



"It is that cranium and lower jaw of 

 a muskrat that I picked up on the banks 



of Big Tink Lake, as we were walking 

 there together. 



"Beautiful specimen !" he exclaimed, 

 looking at it admiringly, "the ants have 

 cleaned it of every particle of fleshy 

 fiber. 



"I had no intention of bringing it 

 with me." 



He seemed to be quite interested in 

 his find, and sat down on a boulder to 

 examine it more conveniently. He fitted 

 the condyloid processes of the lower 

 jaw into their proper places and brought 

 the adze-shaped front teeth together. 



"Fits perfectly/' he said, nodding his 

 head. "Pretty evident that the beast 

 was a rodent," I ventured, tentatively; 

 I must confess that I am more of a 

 sportsman than a naturalist; I had an 

 impression that ordinary rats and mice 

 were rodents but was by no means sure 

 that muskrats belonged among them. 



"Rodent? Certainly," said the Doc- 

 tor, "typical case, my son. Trade mark 

 of the order as seen from the front : 

 two big upper teeth curving down to 

 meet two big lower teeth curving up- 

 ward — and a great toothless gap ex- 

 tending back from them on each side of 

 the jaws until you come to the back 

 teeth, the grinders, the molars." 



"Why do you say, 'seen from the 

 front?'" 



"Because it is the only way to look at 

 a rodent's dentition so as to make out 



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