rocky mountain woodchuck (Arctomys Haviventris) 



resembles a hare. During the same 

 day, about four o'clock in the after- 

 noon, i loosened a rock from the edge 

 of the cliff to see it crash down hun- 

 dreds of feet below into a lake. Under 

 the stone was a queer, grayish brown 

 little beast that looked like a cross be- 

 tween a mole and a rat. It began at 

 once to burrow at a great rate, and had 

 I not succeeded in temporarily stunning 

 it with the heel of my boot, would have 

 incontinently disappeared. It was very 

 fierce when it came to again, and I had 

 considerable difficulty in securing it. 

 It was a cylindrical-shaped creature, 

 about five and three-quarters inches 

 inches long, with a short tail, small ears, 

 and mere dots of eyes. I obtained a 

 picture of it. 



Doctor Lawrence called it a pocket 

 rat, not, he informed us, because of the 

 •fact that it is a smaller representative, 

 a sort of pocket edition of a larger ani- 

 mal, 'living because of their sins,' at 

 the expense of the farmers of the Mis- 

 sissippi valley, but because it carried 

 pockets of its own in its cheeks. 

 'They/' he said, "or, rather, the larger 

 variety are called pocket gophers in the 

 irrigated regions of the great South- 



west, where a comparatively few of 

 them will do such damage in a year that 

 if we had the money value of what they 

 destroyed, it would make us both inde- 

 pendently wealthy. They are not real- 

 ly pocket gophers, however, but pocket 

 rats, belonging to the genus Thomo- 

 mys, and this one of yours to 

 the Rocky Mountain specias chwius, 

 while the pocket gophers, in a collec- 

 tion, would read 'Geomys Cucarius.' " 

 "This one put up a mighty good fight 

 before I got him harnessed up with a 

 string, as you see," I said. "For some 

 reason or other, most animals that 

 spend their lives underground, such 

 as moles, mole rats, and pocket 

 rats, have ferocious tempers," said 

 the Doctor. "Shut two pocket rats 

 up together and they will fly at 

 each other, clench and never let go 

 until one of the two is dead. It is 

 wonderful how they can butt their way 

 through the soil," he added, "with those 

 blunt heads of theirs, loosening the 

 earth in front of them with their pow- 

 erful forefeet, they push their heads 

 into the loose dirt, and propelled by 

 their hind feet, shove the soil along in 

 front of them up an inclined passage 



526 



