THE PEAIRIE DOG OF THE GREAT PLAINS. 
205 
bling in the holes. Running horses often trip and break their legs, 
and riders are sometimes injured and even killed. 
On ranch lands prairie dogs have proved destructive to a variety of 
crops, among which are alfalfa (PI. XXIV, figs. 2 and 3), grain, }Kjta- 
toes, and sugar beets, and on grazing lands they are said to consume, 
or bury under their mounds, so much grass that the capacity of the 
land for supporting stock is reduced, as already noted, from 50 to 7.5 
per cent. A prominent Texas newspaper recently published an edito- 
rial containing the following: 
No niaii who has not gone through the portions of Texas infested l)y prairie <logs 
can conceive the enormous ravages they have committed. Millions of acres of land 
once covered with nutritious grasses have been eaten off by these animals, until the 
land is naked and worthless, and will remain worthless so long as the prairie dog 
remains. They invade the farms and eat down the growing crops. Here and there 
individual effort has been made to destroy them, without avail, and their numbers 
steadily increase, until they are a menace to the prosperity of the land. 
POPULAR INTEREST LN THE DESTRUCTION OF PRAIRIE DOGS. 
The general apathy of a few 3^ears ago, when land was plentiful and 
of little value, has given place to widespread and active effort to rid 
the country of the pests. Wherever our field experiments have been 
made, from the Dakotas to Texas, the inhabitants were found fully 
awake as to the necessity for immediate action, and hundreds, if not 
thousands, of them had already expended time and money in single- 
handed efforts. The recent attempt of the National Government to 
ascertain the simplest and most efficient means of combatiiig the evil 
has been received with universal approval. With one or two excep- 
tions, our field men were granted free access to private lands, and in 
most instances were enthusiasticall}^ received and accorded every assist- 
ance and courtesy. In some cases, where the animals are rajndly 
increasing, the actual and prospective losses are so great that ranch- 
men expressed their willingness to pa}- for the destruction of the ani- 
mals at a rate per acre exceeding the actual market value of the land, 
METHODS OF DESTRUCTION. 
In the case of prairie dogs, as in the case of gophers and ground 
squirrels, numerous remedies have been suggested and tried, most 
of which have met with a certain measure of success. Few, how- 
ever, have proved available on a large scale. It is easy to destroy 
isolated animals, and to completely exterminate the inhal)itants of 
small isolated colonies, but, as a rule, the problem ct)nt'ronting the 
sufferer from prairie dogs is one of larger dimensions; to cope with 
it successfully means the employment of measures and remedies that 
are simple, easily handled, available on a large st-ale. and last, but 
not least, not too costly (either for materials or labor) to be used 
over areas comprising thousands of acres. The cost on large ram hes 
