146 
June S 
lOXCER.MXG “POCKET” GOPHERS. 
BY DR. ELLIOTT COUES, E.S.A. 
I lately had somethine to say, in this paper and else 
where, about the prairie gopher; but the similarity in 
name must not mislead anyone to confound that kind 
of animal with the “pocket” gopher, which is altogeth- 
er a different kind of a beast. The name of “gopher” 
has a queer sound, and its origin is equally singular. 
It is an out-and-out foreigner, which has only lalely got 
its naturalization papers from the dictionary' makers. 
It is obviously a corruption of the Canadian-French 
term gauffre, as usually written in this connection, but 
this is itself a change from the better French gaufre, 
wlych means a “honeycomb,” and was applied to these 
indefatigalde borrowers, which riddle or honeycomb the 
earth with their endless galleries. My reading does not 
trace the terra back of M. Rafinesque-Smaltz, a peculiar 
person given to variegation of sober facts with fancy; 
but the genealogy just given seems to be sound, and in 
our event “gopher” is just as good as any other name 
for practical purposes, and “pocket gopher” will do 
very well for the animals I am going to talk about. 
How to describe the pocket gopher without resorting 
to scientific technicalitie.s puzzles me not a lirtle. There 
are no well known animals to compare them with, so 
peculiar are they, both in appearance and in habits. 1 
shall just take the bull by the horns, and after I have 
had my scientific say, the rest may come easier. The 
pocket gophers constitute the famQy Oeomyiditot au- 
thors; one of the numerous groups of the large order 
Bodentia, or gnawers— animals with two large front 
teeth, and no canines between these and the grinders. 
Beavers, porcupines, squiirels, rabbits, rats and mice 
are all rodents. The Geomyidez are a rather small fam- 
ily, composed of only two genera : Geomy» and Ihaino- 
■Miys. There are several species of the former genus in 
the United States, and some in Mexico. Oeomys bursa- 
rim is the best known of these. G. pineti is a peculiar 
species inhabiting the Southern States. G. enstanopi is 
another, from Texas and New Mexico. Of the numer- 
ous described species of TIunrwmyt, only a single one is 
a good species, though this splits, in different regions, 
into several geographical varieties, such as Ihomomyi 
talpoides, Ttiomomyi hidbicoriu, and T1u>momys umbnnun. 
Besides these, I have a fine new species of the same 
genus, which I am about to describe in another place. 
These, with some Mexican and Central American spe- 
cies of Geomyi, as G. mexicanm and G. hinpidu^, are all 
that are known to comprise the family. All are con- 
fined to America, and in the United States are chiefly 
restricted to the regions from the Mississippi Valley 
westward; they abound in suitable soils, and are great 
plagues to the farmers in all settled districts. 
The two genera just mentioned, Geomys and Tliomo- 
mys, differ verylitt e from each other except in techni- 
cal particulars. They are best distinguisl.ed by the 
structure of the fore teeth. In Geomys, the upper in- 
cisors have a deep groove down the middle, and often 
also another fine groove along the inner margin of the 
tooth; in Thomomys this fine groove alone exists, the rest 
of the tooth being smooth. There are some other 
points which I need not particularize. The various 
species are chiefiy distinguished by slight points of size, 
form, and color, evident to the naturalist’s eye, but easy 
to be overlooked by anyone else. The habits of all the 
species are identical, so far as we know; and for the 
present we will ignore all distinctions, and speak of the 
species collectively, as if th( re were but one kind, as 
many persons suppose. Having thus eased the scientific 
department of my conscience, I am free to talk of pocket 
gophers as I please. 
A stump-tailed rat with trowel-like hands and a pair 
of bags tied to the head would look something like a go- 
pher, only much handsomer. A gonber is a phenome- 
non of ugliness. In the first place, there is no more 
shape to a gopher than there is to an old shoe. There 
is no distinction of head, neck and body; it is all in a 
lump. There are no ears — at least none to speak of. 
The eyes are mere peepers through the fur. The crea- 
tures are terribly splay-footed with neglected nails up 
on the forefeet longer than the fingers, like a first-chop 
heathen Chinee’s. Behind, the body sticks out an inch 
or so in a place of which the less said the better, and 
from the end of this sprouts a reckless sort of a tail, too 
small to be of any use, and too large to be overlooked. 
The front elevation of the beast is indescribably comi- 
caL The most striKing features are two pair of enor- 
mous red front teeth, which can by no possibility be 
hidden; in fact they aie altogether too large to go in the 
animal’s mi uth, so that when it shuts they .arc left out- 
side, and the lips close behind them vertical.;. Fancy 
a creature with an up-and-down mouth that shuts side- 
ways! If Bhike, th.at oblique genius, had ever seen a 
gopher’s mouth, he never would have drawn the Ghost 
of a Flea as the embodiment of the awfully grotesque. 
And yet a gopher’s mouth is a tame and serious affair 
compared w ith its accompaniments. On the sides of 
the cheeks there are a pair of skinny and furry bags of 
entirely preposterous proportions. These bags are not 
regular cheek -pouches opening into the irouth like the 
receptacles of food that a chipmunk, for instance, pos- 
sesses. They are, like the gopher’s front teeth, alto 
gether exterior, forming a sort of hood or cowl on each 
side, that extends back even over the shoulders iu some 
species, and they open to the from bj' long slits. They 
are deep folds of the ordinart' skin of the body, lined 
with fur inside. Though a gopher averages under the 
size of a house-rat, three fingers may be inserted to the 
second joint iu one of the pouches; and when the sacs 
are distended the animal’s greatest breadth of beam is 
across his head, paunch}' as he is e>ery where. Nature 
has not only “put a head on him” but a whole Mansard 
roof. 
If there is ■ nylhing uglier in the world than a gopher, 
it is some of the pictures of gophers. The very first 
gopher that ever fell into the "vay of science, was skin- 
ned by an Indian about the chese of the las century. 
This son of nature might have been able to see God in 
clouds, and hear him in the wind; but he evidently did 
not understand a gopher. For he turne 1 the pockets 
inside out, and left them hanging there. This Uxider- 
mal effort was destined to become historical. The skin 
came into the possession of a Briii-h officer, who drew 
it, and sent his picture with the specimen to England, 
making a present of the curiosity to the wife of a cer- 
tain personage, who, let us hop :, appreciated it. How- 
ever this mty be, the naturalists got hold of it, and re- 
produced the comical drawing iu their books. Succ 
pouches as the gophers have were not before dreameil 
of in the then zoological philosophy, and it was nearly 
half a century before naturalists could agree to believe 
in them as they really are. The naturalist already men- 
tioned as being economical of the truth, M. Kafines<iue 
Smaltz, tried his hand at the subject in 1S17, with the 
result of making one genus for the animal with the 
pouches wrong side out, and another for tiie same go- 
pher with the pouches right side in ; and even so late 
as 1829, the eminent Sir John Richardson took his cue 
from Rafineque for want of knowing better. 
What these pouches are for we shall see in the sequel, 
when, we come to speak of the mole-like habit of 
these queer baggy rats. Aside from their preposterous 
shapes, the gophers are rather nice animals, on the 
whole. Their fur is their strong point. This is very 
fine, soft, and sleek, of various pleasing shades of 
blown, gray or fawn color. When I get exasperated 
in handling gophers, over their preposterous ugliness 
of shape, I always mollify myself by stroking their 
pretty glossy coats, and admit that the tailor makes the 
gopher as well as the man. Jos. Seoley, in Vanity 
Fair, was a paunchy fellow, who would have been 
much more disagreeable if be had not been well-dressed; 
in fact he alluded to the best thing about himself, next 
to his stomach, when he admitted he was a dress}' man. 
A gopher resembles the plethoric Joseph. He has a 
well-fed, well-to-do, comfortable look, advertising the 
fact that his pockets like his paunches, are seldom 
empty. 
But then, if they are not rather ashamed of them- 
selvesfor being such ridiculous objects, in spite of their 
good clothes, why do they hide away so persistently 
under ground, as if they thought that the light did not 
suit their complexion? The very moles are as fond of 
sun light as they. Gophers are the hardest of all ani- 
mals to cultivate acquaintance with. They like their 
own company best, aud they stay underground where 
they can get it. We hear of people “ scraping ” 
acquaintance, whatever that may be — but if you want to 
know a gopher, you have to “dig” acquaintance — scrap- 
ing won’t do at all. Our general knowledge about them 
is very superficial — literally. In a populous gopher dis- 
trict the surface of the ground is dotted with innumer- 
able little piles of dirt, and we know .the animals are 
below; but so rarely do they show their noses that we 
may live there for years and never see one. For my 
part, I never saw a live gopher on his native heath in 
my life, though I have lived for years where they lived, 
and seen thousands of their hillocks. An enterprising 
dog will occasionally drag one out and worry it; hawks 
.sometimes pounce on them ; but on the whole the 
gophers have an easy time of it, with ittie to fear. 
Nothing, however, is safe from a naturalist, not evt-u 
the Pompeii and Herculaneum, of gopherdom. Pick 
and shovel have been at work unearthing some streets 
of the buried cities, and have uncovered the homes of 
this shrewd, industrious, and acquisitive people. 
The little mounds scattered over the surface of the 
ground in grassy fertile glades, by the river’s bank, in 
meadows — everywhere, in short, where the soil is loose 
and workable, and certain kinds of plants flourish — 
these hillocks of fresh earth are not each alongside a 
hole, like a prairie gopher’s or badger’s. The gopher 
knows a trick worth two of that, and never goes in or 
out without closing the door after him. He has to 
come to the surface contiuually to deposit the earth 
excavated in running his tunnels, and each little heap of 
dirt IS where he came out to empty his pouches. When 
the tunnel is run so far that it is easier to work to the 
surface in a fresh spot than to carry his load back to 
the old opening, Jie plugs it up solid, leaving no trace of 
the course of his wanderings. This is very carious. 
In this manner the g..pher works his way through yard 
after yard of soil, tuuneding iu zig-zag below the sur- 
face, according to the nature of the ground, or the sup- 
ply of roots he likes to feed upon. He digs with his 
enormous forefeet, armed with immense claws, alto- 
gether quite like the spade-foot of a mole; and the 
pouches are his wheelbarrows (without a wheel, indeed, 
but somehow the similie seems to hold), which ue con- 
tinually fills with earth to be carried out and dumped 
in a heap on the surface of the ground. But it must 
not be supposed that in digging through the soil the 
gopher IS just travelling on his muscle, like the man 
who went into the fight because it was free. The 
gopher has an object in view — an utilitarian one, no less 
important than going to market. Unlike his neighbor 
the mole, who takes to worms and bugs, he is a vege- 
tarian, strictly; and his subterranean peregrinations are 
in search of the roots he likes to eat. And in one part 
of his indisputed territory he lays up a goodly hoard, 
this provident creature, and he makes his headquarters 
there, whence he issues forth a-foraging in all direc- 
tions. Altogether, the gopher’s arraugemenii are quite 
complete, and in fact more so than wimld be fairly ex- 
pected. For I have not quite finished my story yet. 
If cleanliness be next to godliness, the gopher, I 
think, stands a fair chance of salvation. When earth- 
closets were first introduced as a sanitary regulation lor 
the health and comfort of invalids, they were sup losed 
to be an invention. They are in truth excellent, but 
there’s nothiug new under the sun. The cat has been 
supposed to have discovered the principle, and she cer- 
tainly puts it in practice. Who has not seen a cat 
thoughtfully scratching earth to cover her private re- 
treat? But, now, it appears that the gopher was the 
originator of the earth closet; at any rate he has every 
facility, and he employs it to the best advantage. In 
all his wanderings there is left no unmentionable trace 
of his having been there. But from the spot where he 
maaes his snug bed, there leads off a private gallery 
ending in a little pit; whither the cleanly gopher doth 
betake himself, let us hope, with regularity and satisfac- 
tion <It the call of imperious Nature. 
.\ COLLECTOR’S RAHDLES. 
ALBcqrERQCE, N. M., M.vy 13. 
We have seen but little in New Mexico yet worth re- 
cording. Some of the custom* of the people seem 
strange to us. Seeing them plowing with wooden 
plows amused us for a while. The adobe buildings 
looked odd too, but we soon got accustomed to seeing 
them. The foot hills are covered with a growth of pin- 
on in most places. This timber is a species of pine, 
growing to the size of an apple tree, and something of 
that shape. In the pinons I have found but few birds, 
these being mainly jays, crows and titmice. April 21st, 
I killed a Leaden Titmouse {Psaltriparut pluinbeus) in 
the" pinons in the northern edge of New Mexico. This 
is rather far north for this .«pecies. I first saw Massena 
Partridges about half-way between Taos and Santa Fe, 
say about 36 -latitude; Dr. Coues gives about 34 - as 
their range. They seem very wild and keep in rocky 
places where it is difficult to get them. They are paired 
so far as I have seen them. Saw a few Avosets -fester- 
day. Occasionally I see a Snow Goose or two; strag- 
glers, probably, though they may breed here. Birds 
are not very plenty, although they are migrating, and 
are mostly species common farther north. 
F. Stephkks. 
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