150 



Baird's and the chestnut-collared bunting. From this point they 

 stretch clear away to the Rocky Mountains, subsiding only among 

 the foot-hills of the main range, where the pocket gophers (species 

 of Thomomys) begin to claim the soil ; but a day's march, indeed, 

 from the rocky haunts of the little chief hare (Lagomys priitrop*). 

 The region of the Milk River and its northern tributaries, most of 

 which, as well as the river itself, cross 49°, is their centre of abun- 

 dance. Approaching this parallel from another direction, namely 

 up the Missouri and across country northwesterly from Fort 

 Buford, 1 I first met with them near the mouth of Milk River, and 

 ^iey almost immediately became abundant. They doubtless ex- 

 tend down the Missouri to the mouth of the Yellowstone beyond. 

 Audubon gives the latitudinal distribution from 38° to 55°. The 

 recently described S. elegans and S. armatus of Kennicott (Proc. 

 Phila. Acad. 1863, 158), both being mere varieties of Riclwrd*mi, 

 carry the range of the species in the Rocky Mountain region down 

 to the vicinity of Fort Bridger. 



As already said, the gophers overrun all this prairie country. 

 Travelling 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, 



plentiful as ever in some other sort of a place. Pa-sin-- over a 



that I would say - tin.- .-nits 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 prairie 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 inosculate. 



What a country it is, to be sure, where the most persistent of 

 the minor inequalities of surface are little heaps of dirt alongside 

 of little holes ! But about these holes, which I suppose I ought to 

 describe, there is nothing remarkable whatever, except their num- 

 bers. They are all pretty much alike, yet no two are exactly the 



