JUMPING MOUSE AND POCKET GOPHER 
93 
13 inches, and weighs 8 pounds. It is a water- 
loving animal, almost as much so as the musk- 
rat, and its thick, brown fur is valuable. Under 
proper conditions it is easily kept in captivity. 
The smallest rodent in America is the Least 
Pocket Mouse , 1 of the Rocky Mountain region, 
which has a total length of head and body, 1| 
inches; tail, 2f inches. 
The best swimmer of all rat-like animals is th e 
Muskrat . 3 
The best climber is the Tree Rat , 3 of southern 
India. 
The handsomest rat or mouse in the New World 
is the Kangaroo Rat, of the southwestern United 
States, figured on the opposite page. 
The most humorous of all rat-like animals is 
the Trading Rat, described on page 89, which 
delights in playing practical jokes upon its hu- 
man neighbors. 
The meanest of all rodents is the brown-coated 
Domestic Rat, the pest of civilization every- 
where, which was sent to man as a perpetual 
punishment for his crimes against harmless wild 
creatures all over the world. 
THE POCKET GOPHER FAMILY. 
Geomyidae. 
The Red Pocket Gopher 4 is the most im- 
portant representative of a large Family of bur- 
rowing rodents which does great damage to the 
crops and lands of American farmers. When- 
ever you see a brown-coated burrowing animal, 
the length of a small rat, but twice as thick, 
with a big pouch in the skin of each cheek, a 
swinish appetite, a set of long claws like burglar’s 
tools on each fore foot and a most villanous 
countenance and temper, you may know that it 
is a Pocket Gopher. The pockets in his cheeks 
are to enable him to carry extra large quantities 
of stolen potatoes and seeds. When once you 
have learned the true character and habits of 
this creature, you will, without being asked, care- 
fully refrain from calling any ground-squirrel a 
“Gopher.” 
Most wild animals have some redeeming qual- 
ities, but this cannot make good a claim to one. 
Gophers are not only thieves and robbers, but 
they are so ill-tempered that they even hate each 
other, and the old ones usually are found living 
1 Per-og-nath'us fla'vus. 2 Fi'ber zi-beth'i-cus. 
3 Mus ru-fes'cens. 4 Ge'o-mys bur-sa'ri-us. 
alone. When two captives are placed together, 
they usually fight fiercely until one is killed. 
Their teeth and front claws are very powerful, 
and working together they do great damage, 
in many different ways. 
As a Family, Pocket Gophers inhabit the whole 
United States west of Indiana and the lower 
Mississippi, and also a large part of Alabama, 
JUMPING MOUSE. 
Georgia and Florida. Three genera and about 
thirty-three species are recognized, and while 
some are smaller than others, and some are gray 
or black instead of brown, their appetites and 
habits are all equally objectionable. They spoil 
meadows by throwing up innumerable hillocks 
of loose earth; they devour great quantities of 
vegetable crops, and also corn and small grain; 
they eat the roots of young fruit-trees of nearly 
all kinds, and they destroy canals and irrigating 
ditches by honeycombing their banks. With 
incisor teeth that in sharpness and strength are 
like steel chisels, a Gopher can pare off all the 
roots from a young tree quite as neatly as a man 
pares potatoes. 
Our type species, the Red Pocket Gopher “is,” 
says Mr. Vernon Bailey, “of much greater eco- 
nomic importance than all the other species 
combined, for the reason that its home is in the 
fertile prairie region of the Mississippi valley,” 
