LITTLE MOUNTAINEERS 



527 



to the surface, where they dump it and 

 dive underground again to repeat the 

 process." 



"Doc,'' I said, "how do they manage 

 to breathe with their heads buried in 

 the dirt that they are shoving in front 

 of them?" 



And right here I scored my first point 

 against the Doctor. He could not an- 

 swer my question any more than he 

 could similar ones with which I pelted 

 him ; how, for instance, moles and musk- 

 rats, and many kinds of burrowing 

 birds and beasts, managed to exist, as 



tomys iiaviventris) , the white-footed 

 mouse (Hesperomys leucopus). A 

 shrew that I captured as he was swim- 

 ming in the lake of which I have spoken, 

 and which is named appropriately 

 enough Neosorex navigator, and a 

 muskrat captured in the lower levels 

 east of our camp. 



O'Grady. 



As the eastern representatives of 

 these animals are well known, and the 

 differences between the former and the 

 Rocky Mountain species can only inter- 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHREW 



{Neosorex navigator) 



they do, for extended periods of time, 

 in close, stuffy, holes which cannot pos- 

 sibly contain supplies of oxygenated 

 air, it would seem, sufficient to sustain 

 life. He could only say, "The questions 

 that you raise, I confess, have not oc- 

 curred to me before, and I am not pre- 

 pared to answer them." 



That is the trouble that I find with 

 cut-and-dried information, whether fur- 

 nished by printed or by human ency- 

 clopedias ; the facts that they do not 

 supply are often the only ones you care 

 to know. 



In addition to the others, we managed 

 to secure photographs of the Rocky 

 Mountain species of woodchuck (Afc- 



est a professional naturalist, the limited 

 space remaining altogether to the sub- 

 ject will be given to an animal peculiar 

 to the region in which we were camp- 

 ing. This brings us to the Spermophiles 

 and to O'Grady, a large, tame spermo- 

 phile belonging, according to Doctor 

 Lawrence, to a tribe which rejoices in 

 the Latin name Spermophiles empeira. 



O'Grady belonged to an old man 

 named Lewis, who occupied a lonely 

 little cabin among the foot-hills, and 

 lived by huuting and fishing. He visi- 

 ted us at our camp and brought 

 O'Grady, who went everywhere with 

 him, to see us. 



As far as I know, O'Grady was the 



