30
THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
And still the price of land goes up and still we wonder why. In our
humble trade, profession, on calling of teacher, and not as an experienced
Agriculturist, we would sometimes like to suggest that one very import
ant and simple reason is because this same Agriculturist does not util
ize one hundred per cent of the land he owns. Weeds and briars are
allowed to occupy nooks and corners; sometimes whole fields are aban
doned, cross fences and partition fences, that should not occupy more
than seven or eight feet of space, take up two and sometimes three times
as much and every year the weeds and briars encroach on the cultivated
area; and once in a while, in our rambles we see two fences running
parallel across a farm suggestive of the old long-forgotten “ Devil’s
Lane.” Upon closer inspection, these prove to be not unmentionable
lanes but cases in which farmers found it easier to set the new fence in
a few feet instead of tearing out the old one and replacing it with the
new one. We found one such instance not long since and when we
asked the owner what his field, through which the lane of briars and
weeds ran, was worth, was told $200 per acre.
The real value of a
goodly part of the field was nil.
We wonder how many know the difference between the feeding of the
mole and the pocket gopher, or how many know that all the time the form
er is industriously aiding the farmer in his constant warfare on insects,
grubs, etc., and that the latter is the one that is constantly eating the
underground stems and fleshy roots of plants. The mole has two run
ways; one near the surface of the'ground the other deeper in the ground
and out of sight. The former is where he gathers his food, the latter
where he goes to escape his enemies. He makes the unsightly mounds
around in the lawns by pushing the earth up, making a round mound
with radiating cracks. The gopher has only one run-away, too deep to
be seen. This connects his mounds. About a foot from the fresh
mounds, he digs a fork from the main run-way, into which he runs to
escape persuit on the main run-way. His mounds can be told from the
mole’s from the fact that one side is not full, and they are always built
in an opposite direction from the way he is digging. Moles can be seen
at work on warm days, after rains usually, plowing up their surface
run-ways. They are then hunting for food. This is the best time to
catch them. It is no trouble to cut off their retreat with a sharp spade.
Constant rolling down their run-ways will cause them to leave; it seems
to discourage them. They can be trapped. Success in trapping de
pends largely upon knowing their habits. They are poisoned by re
moving seeds from raisins and inserting instead crystals of strychnine
and carefully placing these in their run-ways.
We have seen hundreds of gophers caught in alfalfa fields with the