PRAIRIE DOG, a name given to either of the two species of marmot-like rodents of the western plains of the genus Cynomys, but es pecially to C. ludovicianus. It is about a foot long, reddish-brown above, lighter beneath. Its habits are eminently social. It forms large com munities on the higher and drier parts of the plains, each burrow having a little hillock at its entrance, forming a firm curb about the shaft, which leads steeply down to a series of cham bers a dozen feet or more underground, where the animals spend the winter in comfort, sus tained by a store of the stems and seed-heads of sunflowers and similar plants.
These colonies were naturally several acres in extent, forming of crowded bur rows; and were frequented by weasels, wolves, badgers, snakes and birds of prey, which preyed upon the rodents and their young, and kept down their numbers. Since the general settle ment of the borders and river-valleys of the plains region, the prairie dogs have been so favored by the decrease of their natural ene mies and by the spread of irrigated cultivated lands, supplying them with both water and food in vast abundance, that they have increased enormously, so that at the opening of the pres ent century areas of thousands of square miles in northern Texas, and in the region between the upper Arkansas and Platte rivers, were so infested with the animals as to be practically useless to man. The question of practical relief
from this condition has been a subject of much discussion among naturalists, not only, but both general and local governments have been forced to act in assistance of the farmers and cattlemen. The most successful means of ex termination seems to be suffocation in their holes by means of bisulphide of carbon, which is placed upon balls of absorbent material and rolled down their burrows. Consult publica tions of the United States Department of Agri culture since 1891.