40 



POCKET GOPHERS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



revel. Nowhere else have I seen their hills so numerous. In places 

 the ground is half covered with them. The mellow sand is easily 

 moved and many hills are thrown up each night. As every hill improves 

 the soil by burying vegetation, it is evident that the Gophers have been 

 of inestimable benefit to the land. 



But the Gopher fails to appreciate the rights of property, and refuses 

 to keep on his own side of the fence. Marrowfat peas, lima beans, and 

 red clover suit his taste just as well as the wild plants of the same 

 family, on which he has dined for untold generations. The farmer 

 quite reasonably objects to having his garden destroyed, his wheat 

 buried, his potatoes eaten, and the roots cut from the trees he has 

 planted for timber or fruit. Consequently a relentless war of extermi- 

 nation is declared and much hard feeling entertained toward the poor, 

 short-sighted rodent. 



In this species we have one instance in which the number of young in 

 a litter is known. A female captured by me at Kennedy, Nebr., April 

 12, 1890, contained two small embryos. The only other Pocket Gopher 

 in which the number is positively known is the Prairie Gopher, in which, 

 as already stated, two young were found in a nest, and in another case 

 two embrvos were found. Audubon makes the statement that six to 

 seven are produced at a birth, and Kennicott places the number at five 

 or six, but both are apparently stating what they have heard at second 

 hand. 



In the case of the above-mentioned female at Kennedy, Nebr., the 

 young would have been born near the end of April, probably by the 

 25th. In the same locality, two years earlier, I found young Gophers 

 about half grown, digging holes for themselves by the middle of June. 



habits of the Louisiana gopher (Geomys breviceps). 



In 1855 Professor Baird described this Gopher from specimens col- 

 lected at Prairie Mer Bouge, Morehouse Parish, La. For years no 

 other specimens were collected, and a doubt arose as to the validity 

 of the species. In 1892 I visited Mer Bouge, secured many specimens, 

 and became familiar with the habits of the animal. 



All over the small original prairie, now mostly occupied by fields of 

 cotton and corn, this Gopher is common, but is most noticeable in pas- 

 tures and along roadsides. Throughout the surrounding timber none 

 were found except along the roads and in old fields, and en the hilly 

 land a few miles back from the river no trace of them could be found. 

 The colony seems restricted to the flat, mellow prairie, and is prevented 

 f rom extending to lower land by annual floods. In the other direction 

 its range is limited by clay hills and standing timber. On the south 

 and east the Mississippi floods check it abruptly. On the west the 

 black wax land of Texas — a soil in which no burrowing mammal lives — 

 proves a complete barrier. 



