42 



POCKET GOPHERS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



None of the farmers about Mer Kouge knew how to catch the Gophers 

 in a practical manner. Some had wasted much time in trying- to dig 

 them out, and in pouring water into their holes in the vain endeavor to 

 drown them. The ease with which a field was cleared of Gophers by 

 means of a few steel traps astonished and delighted the residents. 



Mr. G. W. Heard, of Creek, Calcasieu Parish, La., informs us that 

 salamanders are numerous in that region, and that they do consider- 

 able damage to hilly land by cutting their tunnels about 6 inches 

 under ground, causing the land to wash badly. 



Mr. E. L. Cannon, of Loretta, in the same parish, says : " Salamanders 

 are quite numerous all over Louisiana, with the exception of the marshy 

 lauds on the coast. They are troublesome and destructive on some 

 farms, particularly to potatoes and gardens. In one fall and winter my 

 boys caught 104 on a farm half a mile square with one steel trap/ 7 



In examining the contents of 27 stomachs the food was found to 

 consist wholly of roots and green herbage. Clover seems to be a 

 favorite. 



We had five Gophers cooked for dinner one day and all of the four 

 persons who ate of them pronounced them excellent. There was no 

 bad flavor and the meat was sweet and delicate. As an article of food 

 there can be no possible objection to them. Their diet is purely vege 

 table and their burrows are as fresh and clean as the newly-plowed 

 soil from which come our turnips, beets, and potatoes. 



Mr. H. P. Att water has kindly contributed the following memoran- 

 dum respecting the habits of Geomys breviceps attwateri, a subspecies 

 of this Gopher, at Eockport, Tex. : 



As soon as the warm weather sets in, from about May to September, very few 

 Gophers are observed working. The soil is sandy, and at all times damp, dampness 

 known as "natural subirrigation." In the hot weather the dampness does not come 

 as near the surface as in the cooler months. I have thought that perhaps the Gophers 

 travel deeper in summer, but now think the chief reason why they do not throw up 

 hills in summer, as they do in fall and winter, is that during the summer months the 

 soil is so full of roots, suckers, bulbs, etc., that they do not have far to go before 

 finding all they can eat, and that the reason they Avork so much after the summer 

 months are over is because they are hunting around to find some bulb or root which 

 was their favorite food in summer, and which they commenced to find about the 

 month of May and was over with in September. The animals are very abundant all 

 over the peninsulas in Aransas County wherever the soil is sandy. There is hardly a 

 foot of land that has not been 1 plowed' several times over by Gophers, and I believe 

 the fertility of some sections has in this way been greatly improved. I have noticed 

 that the richer the land the richer the Gophers. Of course they do considerable 

 damage to vegetable crops, especially to young fruit trees and cuttings just rooting. 

 The samples sent you of mulberry trees cut by Gophers were from the Faulkners' 

 ranch, on St. Charles peninsula, in the eastern part of the county. Mr. Samuel 

 Walker, the manager of the ranch, told me that he killed over 250 Gophers in his 

 young pear orchard between the 1st of March and April 15, 1893. This orchard was 

 net out where sweet potatoes had grown the year before, and they came up again 

 and covered the ground, and I think the potatoes attracted the Gophers in the first 

 place more than the pear trees. 



