62 



SPEKMOPHILES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



"It is one of the most abundant animals of our country, occurring 

 by hundreds of thousands over as many square miles of territory, almost 

 to the exclusion of other forms of mammalian life. Millions of acres of 

 ground are honeycombed with its burrows. * * * I never saw any 

 animals — not even buffalo — in such profusion. I have ridden for days 

 and weeks where they were continuously as numerous as prairie dogs 

 are in their populous villages. Their numbers to the square mile are 

 vastly greater than I ever ascertained those of beccheyi, the pest of 

 California, to be, under the most favorable conditious. In a word, their 

 name is legion. If Dakota and Montana were the garden of the world 

 (which they are not, however), either the gophers or the gardeners 

 would have to quit. * * * Traveling among them, how often have 

 I tried to determine in my mind what particular kind of ground, or 

 what special sites they preferred, only to have any vague opinion I 

 might form upset, perhaps in a few hour's more riding, by finding the 

 animals as plentiful as ever in some other sort of a place. Passing over 

 a sterile, cactus-ridden, alkali-laden waste, there would be so many that 

 I would say 'this suits them best'; in camp that very night, in some 

 low grassy spot near water, there they would be, plentiful as ever. 

 One thing is certain, however; their gregarious instinct is rarely in 

 abeyance. A few thousand will occupy a tract as thickly as the prai- 

 rie dogs do, and then none but stragglers may be seen for a whole day's 

 journey. 



" Their choice of camping grounds is however wholly fortuitous, for all 

 that we can discover, and moreover the larger colonies usually inoscu- 

 late. * * * If the animals have any preference, it is a choice of 

 the lighter and more easily worked soils, rather than a question of 

 location. They seem to haunt especially the slight knolls of the prairie 

 a few feet above the general level. There the soil is looser, and the 

 inhabitants have some little additional advantage in their view of the 

 surrounding country. But there are plenty of burrows in the heaviest 

 soil of the creek bottoms. They dislike stony places for obvious rea- 

 sons, yet they will often burrow beneath a single large rock. I have 

 also found nearly horizontal holes of theirs dug from the face of an 

 almost perpendicular bank. In short, there is endless diversity in the 

 details of their habitations. * * * There is one very curious point 

 in the socialism of these animals. Every now and then, in odd out-of- 

 the-way places, where there may not be another gopher for miles per- 

 haps, we come upon a solitary individual guarding a well-used burrow, 

 all alone in his glory. The several such animals I have shot all proved 

 to be males; and what is singular, these old fellows are always larger 

 than the average (some would weigh twice as much), peculiarly sleek 

 and light colored, and enormously fat. The earlier ones I got I sus- 

 pected to be a different species, so peculiar were they in many respects. 

 I suppose they are surly old bachelors who have forsworn society for 

 a life of indolent ease, though il* 1 had found them oftener among their 



