LITTLE MOUNTAINEERS 



525 



called my attention to two little crea- 

 tures upon a flat rock not far away, 

 and told me that they were pikas, or 

 whistling Joes, or little chief hares. 



As we stood looking at them a third 

 made its appearance from a crevice in 

 the rocks and advanced toward its com- 

 panions. Its legs were so very short 

 that their agency in moving it along 

 was not at all apparent, and its mode 

 of progression was exactly of that jerky 

 sort that we instinctively associate with 

 mechanical toys. As the little animal 

 joined its companions they one and all 



when given to the animal that we call 

 'prairie dog.' " 



"No such thing," protested the Doc- 

 tor. "They are really hares." 



"They don't look it,'' I said. 



"Oh, I grant yon that they want the 

 long, lank body, long ears, and long 

 hind legs, generally considered inde- 

 spensable to the make-up of one of the 

 Leporidae family," replied the Doctor, 

 "but appearances are sometimes decep- 

 tive ; they are hares for all that." 



"How is it proved that they are 

 hares?" I asked. 



WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE 



(Hcsperomys ieucopus) 



squatted, threw b?ck their heads and 

 pumped squeaks at us — each and every 

 squeak being accompanied by a more 

 or less violent contraction of the body. 



They were evidently giving us their 

 unbiased opinion of the thieves who 

 stole their fodder. 



"They are calling us names," said the 

 Doctor. 



"That's all right; you were calling 

 them names that don't belong to them," 

 I retorted. "You called them hares; 

 they are evidently some kind of gopher 

 or prairie dog. But I suppose the name 

 'hares ' as applied to them is a sort of 

 popular misnomer like the name 'dog,' 



"Anatomy and dentition," retorted 

 the Doctor, laconically, and I, of course, 

 was silenced, though I could not help 

 thinking strictly in the seclusion of my 

 own brain pan, that there was some- 

 thing queer about a science that insisted 

 upon associating animals as dissimilar 

 as mice and mammoths, and hares and 

 pikas. 



I succeeded before we left the place 

 in getting a snap shot at one of the lit- 

 tle mountaineers, showing his dark, 

 grizzled back, gopher-shaped head, and 

 round, black ears margined with white. 

 The reader can see for himself how 

 much, or rather how little the creature 



