CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODETs^TIA. 
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When awake, the sitting position is nearly spherical, and the animal about fills the hollow of 
the hand ; but in sleeping, the body is more stretched out. Like hares, they are leaping animals, 
but the shortness of the hind-legs renders the leap rather slow and awkward ; and they are by 
no means swift upon the ground. 
These curious animals inhabit the southeastern parts of Russia, and are found about all the 
ridges spreading from the Ural mountains to the south, along the Irtish, and in the western parts 
of the Altai mountains, but nowhere in the East beyond the Obi. 
The Alpine Lagomys, or Alpine Pika, X. Alpinus, called Ladajac by the Siberians, is found 
Ipt the Altai mountains, and in Kamtschatka and Siberia. Its general color is reddish-yellow, in- 
terspersed with much longer hairs of a black color. The part round the mouth is ash-color, and 
the under parts of the legs and the ears brown, the latter being rounded in their outlines. The 
length is only about nine inches and a half. 
This species is very abundant in some parts of Siberia, where it is well known to the hunters. 
It is found on the slopes of the steepest mountains, and even on the most inaccessible rocks; but 
in all situations they prefer the humid copses, in which, in rocky and mountainous places especi- 
ally, they find abundance of herbage during the whole of the summer season. They are, strictly 
speaking, ground animals, and live indiscriminately in burrows excavated by themselves, in holes 
of the rocks, and in the hollows of decayed trees. Tliej are not gregarious, but are found singly, 
or in pairs, or in families, according to the season. About the middle of August they begin to 
collect with great diligence and industry their store of provisions for the winter. This consists 
of the seeds of plants, of leaves, and of grasses, and they make their magazines in the earth, in 
the holes of rocks, or in the hollows of trees. These stores are not collected by each animal 
for itself; for, according to the number that may be in any particular locality, they unite in the 
labor of collecting the winter store; and it is understood that so true does the collecting 
instinct remain while the store lasts, that none of those who bore a part in the labor of col- 
lecting are ever excluded from their share of the magazine, neither can strangers invade it, how 
severely soever necessity may pinch them. These magazines are often of very considerable 
magnitude, considering the small size of the animals. They frequently bear a considerable resem- 
blance to a hay-rick, seven or eight feet high, and about the same in diameter; and when they 
are of this size, the animals form a subterranean passage from their own dwellings to the store, 
by which they can find their way when the whole is buried under the snow. These animals do 
not, as we have hinted, commit any depredations upon the stores of each other, but they often 
do not come off so well at the hands of the Siberian hunters, who, when provender for their 
horses fails, frequently plunder these industrious little creatures. 
Pallas examined, with that attention which he was in the habit of paying to all subjects con- 
nected with the economy of nature, the stores collected against the season of want by these provi- 
dent animals. He found that they displayed wonderful animal sagacity, both in the plants which 
they selected and in the time at which they cut them down. There were no thorny plants or 
ligneous stems; and the whole appeared to have been cut down at that stage of their growth at 
which grasses are understood to make the best hay. If grasses or other plants which are in- 
tended for this purpose are cut down too early, they are full of sap, which is not only tasteless, 
but it ferments and rots the whole when gathered into a heap. On the other hand, if the 
stems of annual plants stand till the grand labor of the year is over by the ripening of the seeds, 
, the stems which are left are sapless, and afford but little nourishment. The pikas avoid both 
I these extremes, and cut down their winter store when the juice of the stem has acquired its great- 
■ est maturity and sweetness. These harmless little animals, though exposed to the peril of famine 
by having their stores plundered by the hunters, have still other enemies beside the human race. 
The weasel tribe, which are very numerous in that part of the world, seek the abodes of the 
pikas with much assiduity, and kill them in great numbers; and, as is the case with many of the 
warm-blooded animals in those northern countries, they are much infested and tormented with 
the larvae of insects. 
The Gray Pika, or Ogotona, L. Ogotona, is of a pale gray, and is found in Mongol Tartary, 
fispecially in the Desert of Gobi, and in the regions around Lake Baikal. It is an animal of the 
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