The St. Johns herald., 1892-03-24
eRouNpHoG PARADISE.
A Region Where They Undermine Rail-
 ways and Live with Gray Rabbits.

A Region Where They Undermine Rail-
 ways and Live with Gray Rabbits.
 "They have an officer called the groundhog inspector on tho Peachbot- tom railroad in Lancaster county, Pa.," said travelling man to New York Sun reporter, land he's very impor- tant officer, too The Peachbottom road isn't Q very long nor @ very wide one, and it runs from Pcachbottom on the Susquehanna river diagonally across the southern corner of Lancaster. That is the paradise of the groundhogs.
 ''I have been in the famous ground hog pastures of Connecticut and New Hampshire, where these animals an nually eat up over seven hundred thou sand dollars worth of clover for the farmers, although there is price on their heads and they are hunted night and day; but those choice abiding places for groundhogs are sparsely pop ulated by them when compared with that little neck of country through which the PeachbottOm railroad goes. They run the whole country there. They have honeycOmbed the meadows with their burrows until farmer can't walk over his farm without stumbling into one of the holes at every step, and, not satisfied with that, have set about in systematic way to undermine the Peachbottom railroad. They have bur rowed it so successfully that man had to be appointed, so I was told at Ok ford, to keep constant lookout along the line so that no train will be dumped into the ditch from a track made un- stable by the burrowing of groundhogs. This inspector reports the scattering of colony of twenty-five groundhogs in one night, they having already made an excavation in the railway em- banlment big enough for train to run through. The slate and shale soil of that part of the country is what the grounding likes, as it raises big clover and is just the thing to burrow in.
 1.-The presence of so many groundhog holes in that region has also caused big increase in gray rabbits, according to the farmers, although the rabbits have always been more than plentiful. These rabbits do not burrow, and have consequently always have been more or less exposed to the attacks of hawks, foxes, hunters and owls. The groundhog burrows, however, they have suddenly discovered, offer them excellent protection from their enemies, and they seem to be living as contentedlJ and undisturbed in the burrows with the groundhogs as the burrowing owls and prairie dogs do on the western plains. This arrange ment is especially advantageous to the rabbits so far as foxes are concerned, as fox will not enter Q groundhog hole under any consideration.
 ''The abundance of groundhogs in southern Lancaster county has also given rise to new sport, which hasn't much to recommend it. This is the matching of fighting dogs against groundhogs, and scarcely a night passes that a match is not fought in some body's cellar or room fitted up for the purpose. Dogs are trained purposely to fight groundhogs, and those who have witnessed matches say that the ground hog is such Q fierce and gamy fighter when he is cornered and has to fight that the dog has to be a good one with big reputation where the sports will not give odds in favor of the ground hoo"