1 18 



to find a name for them. " Ground squirrel " would be unobjec- 

 tionable and indeed appropriate, but that is already in use for the 

 species of Tamias. "Marmot "is sometimes used, the present 

 species being the tawny marmot of some writers, but this is Hie 

 name of the woodchucks (Arctomys). "Spermophiles" they have 

 been called ; but this word is so thoroughly un-English that it will 

 probably stay in the learned books where it arose. Naturalists, in 

 fact, have no English name for these animals. But by the people 



as this name will certainly stick in the vernacular for all time, we 

 may as well accept it. We will say " gopher," then. 



I elect to write about the prairie gopher — as I shall call that 

 particular species known in the books as Spermophil us ni<-J<anl- 

 soni — for several reasons. In the first place. I know more about 

 it than I do about any other species of the genus at present. 

 Secondly, nobody else seems to know much about it. Thirdly, it 

 is one of the most abundant animals of our country, occurring In- 

 most to the exclusion of other forms o7mammalian life. Millions 

 of acres of ground are honeycombed with its burrows. Through- 

 How far from being exhausted is the natural history of the Tinted 

 States, when of such an animal as this next to nothing to the 

 point is found written down about it, beyond a description of its 

 skin and skull and a sketch of those characteristics which it shares 

 with other Spermophili! Until recently, indeed, a stuffed skin of 

 the prairie gopher was something of a rarity. Let me make such 



mats says no specimens of this species were collected by any of 

 the Pacific railroad expeditions, and makes use of one in the Phil- 

 adelphia Academy for description, collected in the Rocky Moim- 



well, and is very good, as far as it goes. 



