THE HAMSTER. 
461 
purpose of laying up a winter store of provisions. By dint of dexterous management, the 
animal tills its cheek-pouches with grain, pressing it firmly with its paws, so as to lose no 
space, and then carries off its plunder to its subterranean treasury, where it disgorges the con- 
tents of the pouches, and returns for another supply. The husbandmen are so well aware of 
this propensity that they search after the habitation of the Hamster after the harvest is over, 
and often recover considerable quantities of the stolen grain. The destructive capability of 
the animal may be gathered from the fact that a single Hamster has been known to hoard no 
less than sixty pounds of corn in its home, while a hundred weight of beans have been recov- 
ered from the storehouses of another specimen. 
The skin of the Hamster is of some value in commerce, so that the hunters make a double 
use of a successful chase, for they not only recover the stolen property of the agriculturist, 
but gain some profit by selling the skins. 
HAMSTER .— Cricetus frumentanus. 
The burrow of the Hamster is a most complicated affair, and not very easy to describe. 
Each individual has a separate burrow, and not even in the breeding season do the male and 
female inhabit the same domicile. At some depth below the surface of the earth are several 
rather large chambers, communicating with each other by horizontal passages. In one of these 
chambers the creature lives, and in the others it places its store of provision. There are at 
least two entrances to each burrow, one being almost perpendicular, and the other sloping. 
Sometimes there are more than two entrances to the chambers, but there are never less than 
that number. The depth of the chambers is from three to five feet. Each burrow is only 
intended to serve for one season, and is abandoned at the end of winter. 
As the Hamster is in the habit of throwing the excavated earth from the oblique burrow, 
technically called the “creeping-hole,” its locality is discovered by means of the mound of 
loose earth which is heaped at its entrance. Eighty thousand of these animals have been 
killed in one year within a single district. 
The Hamster is a very prolific animal, as appears from the fact that it still holds its own 
in spite of the constant persecution to which it is subjected by the agriculturists and the 
regular hunters. There are several broods in each year, the average number of each family 
being from seven to ten or twelve. As soon as the young Hamsters are able to shift for them- 
