ZOOLOGY. 
55 
in summer and fall, they feed on the seeds of the pines and firs to some extent; hut their great 
storehouse of provisions is formed by the thickets of large species of Ceanothus, ( C. laevigatus and 
G. velutinus ,) the seeds of which are the favorite food of all the ground squirrels inhabiting, the 
region where they grow. 
In the Cascade mountains are immense stretches of country where the pine and fir forests 
have been destroyed by fire—the trees not burned, but killed, and all thrown down by the wind, 
covering the ground with an almost impenetrable labyrinth of interlocking trunks. Over this 
surface spring dense and continuous thickets of Ceanothus , and great numbers of clumps of 
gooseberry bushes, which are loaded and reddened by an unparalleled profusion of large scarlet 
berries, very beautiful to the eye, hut perfectly flat and insipid to the taste. These thickets are 
the favorite haunts of the little ground squirrels, and they, with the ruffled grouse, find good 
use for all these scarlet berries. My attention was first called to the fact of their feeding on 
these berries by the blood red imprints of the squirrels’ feet on the smooth and barkless trunks 
of the fallen pines ; and as these tracks multiplied, I began to wonder at the ferocity of the 
squirrels of this region, which covered the country with blood. As the gooseberry hushes be¬ 
came more numerous, I detected the connexion between their fruit and the crimson tracks, and 
at the same time found a good reason for the production in such extreme abundance of fruit so 
entirely useless to man, and apparently so little relished by the man-like hears. 
SPERMOPHILUS DOUGLASII. 
Columbia Ground Squirrel. 
Arctomys (Spermophilus) douglasii, Kich. F. B. A. I, 1829, 172. 
Spermophilus douglasii, Aud. and Bach. N. Am. Quad. I, 1849, 373 ; pi. xlix. 
Baird, Gen. Hep. Mammals, 1857, 309. 
gp. Cn.—Similar in most all respects to S. beecheyi, but with the space on the nape and back, between the light colored 
more lateral patches, of a uniform dark brown, nearly black. 
The “ ground squirrels,” as the different species of Spermophilus'are commonly called, are, to 
a stranger in California, a new and interesting feature of the zoology of the country. He has 
probably heard of the villages of “prairie dogs” on the plains of central North America, and has 
listened with interest or incredulity to the stories of these strange communities made up of such 
incongruous materials as mammals, birds and reptiles, spermophiles, owls, and rattlesnakes. 
If he should happen at any time to traverse the valley of the Sacramento, in California, he will 
he no lover of nature if he be not gratified, and even delighted, to see with his own eyes, and to 
examine closely, the villages of owls and spermophiles which he will he sure to pass. 
These squirrel colonies, composed of individuals of the species S. douglassii and S. beecheyi, 
are not organized on the same plan or in similar places with those of the prairie dog (Cynomys 
ludovicianus .) The prairie dog inhabits open prairies, its villages being composed of closely 
set burrows, frequently spread over a surface of miles in extent. This species is not found in 
California, where the spermophiles are all long-tailed, and more or less arboreal in their habits. 
Nor are they, by any means, as social as the prairie dogs ; a single individual being frequently 
found living at a distance from all others, usually under some tree, into which he often climbs, 
and from which you will probably dislodge him by your approach, as his burrow is his citadel, 
to which he betakes himself on the least alarm. 
We first saw the spermophiles in considerable numbers in the belts of timber which border 
Suisun, Cache, and Putos creeks. These streams come down from the Coast Range and 
