Audubon kept several gophers in captivity for months, feeding them on potatoes. Their appetites were voracious, but they would drink neither water nor milk. They made incessant efforts to regain their liberty by gnawing through boxes and doors. They constantly dragged clothing and other similar objects together, utilizing them as bedding, first gnawing them to pieces. One of them, straying into a boot, instead of turning back, simply gnawed its way through the tip. The habit of gnawing was unendurable and Audubon incontinently got rid of them.
The gopher is very destructive to valuable trees and plants, for which reason man is its most dangerous enemy, the only other foes it has to fear being water and snakes.
This pretty little rodent is often found in populous neighborhoods. A few years ago the writer saw one rush into a hole under the root of a large osage orange bush in Woodlawn, Chicago. Curiosity led him to watch for the reappearance of the animal, which soon put its head cautiously above the entrance and eyed the intruder with as much interest as a weasel will often show under like circumstances. For several weeks the gopher was visible in the morning hours. We pointed it out to several persons, each of whom declared it to be a ground squirrel. There is a great difference in these small animals, but they are frequently confounded.
The name of gopher is applied in some American localities to various other rodents.
HANS AND MIZI.
DR. ALBERT SCHNEIDER.
HANS was a little blue-eyed German orphan who had been "adopted" by a man and wife because they thought they could make good use of him; but to their chagrin they were disappointed. Hans had been told again and again that he was an ungrateful, lazy, good for-nothing. This was also the reason why his master whipped him so frequently. Now Hans was only nine years old and, of course, he could not know that he was so thoroughly bad unless he was told and the telling of it accompanied by cuffs, in order to impress this fact more fully upon his dull brain.