Mr. Chase says rabbits drink. I think there are two sides to that question. I know a boy who has a dozen rabbits and not one ever drinks. I have two and neither ever drink. Another friend had two that he kept seven years. They drank milk, and, at rare times, water. I believe that rabbits can be trained either way. What is the experience of others?
Victor R. Gage.
Vineland.
A Florida Gopher.
A Florida gopher is very different from those we read about as living out West. In shape and size he is nearly like a common fresh-water turtle, with this difference; he lives on land. The gopher has a very hard shell covering his entire body except the head and feet. His front feet are nearly like a turtle's, with four or five claws, but very hard. They must of necessity be hard, for this animal burrows very deep in this hard, clay ground. His hind feet are round, with a flat bottom, four to five claws on each, evidently made for pushing when walking or burrowing. They look like a miniature elephant's foot.
His head is also very much like a turtle's. When alarmed he draws his head and feet into his shell and remains quiet. He is a very peaceful animal. I have never known one to bite anybody nor anything else. The gopher lives in the ground, burrowing a molelike passage several hundred feet long. There is no use trying to dig for one. It would take a week of the hardest kind of work to reach the bottom of his tunnel.
He comes out every day about noon for his meals. He eats grass, weeds, clover, etc., for his regular meals; but when he finds a farm with pease, beans, and other vegetables, unless he is discovered in time he will do a great deal of damage, for he eats such things voraciously. In raising their young the female lays from five to six eggs in the dirt she has thrown out when digging her tunnel. She buries them, and in a few weeks hatches out a great number of the cutest little things you ever saw. They do not stay with their mother, but go immediately to forming a little burrow for themselves, which is from five to six feet deep. They can live a long time without any food whatever. Their flesh is also eatable, tasting somewhat like chicken. May I write again?
Harry R. Whitcomb.
Umatilla, Fla.
Certainly you may write again.