The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-01-14
LANTZ AND THE FAKIR.
Prairie Dog Exterminator Comments
on the Leslie Picture.

HrOT. II. H. LanCZ, the prairie QOS
man of the State Agricultural college,
takes shot at the fakir who worked
Leslie's Weekly recently with picture
in which jack rabbits were passed off
as prairie dogs. Prof. Lantz says:
I'm an eastern illustrated paper, Jan
uary 2, appeared an article on the
Prairie Dog Plague in Kansas 1t was
accompanied by a picture claiming to
be a typical prairie dog town.. The
mounds, two of which were Surmounted
by birds supposed to repNesent owls.
In the foreground and elsewhere in the
picture were representations of the
common jack rabbit, but nowhere was
there anything resembling prairie
dog.
ton of Misrepresentation. Hardly a SEN
tence in it told the exact truth and
most of the statements were totally
false. Out of the fact that IL million
acres of the prairie dogs are reported
from Western Kansas a tale of ruin and
distress worse than that of the former
plague of grasshoppers or of drought
has been fabricated. The actual num-
Der of prairie dogs has been multiplied
a hundred fold and the loss to The
stockmen grossly exaggerated into
hundreds of millions of dollars.
1.-THE facts are that much of the land
similar to that occupied by prairie dogs
is held for sale at $1.25 an acre and the
school lands in that part of the state
annual rental. The price is independ-
ent of the presence of prairie dogs. A
reasonable estimate of the annual loss
to western ranchmen by reason of the
presence of the pests would be half the
rental value of the land. Putting the
area of the dog towns at million acres,
and the rental value at ten cents an
acre, the loss would amount to 100000
per annum. This estimate is of course
small for the central part of the state;
but, to offset this, there are many sec
Of ho sfafa faf tIar- hn arn
not in use, or would not be grazed to
the limit of their capacity even were the
prairie dogs absent
However, a loss of 500, 900 per year
is a considerable sum and is worth saw
ing. Besides, the great increase of the
area occupied by the animals has come
within three years, and, if continued,
threatens to cover the entire western
country. few years ago contagious
diseases broke out among the prairie
dogs and in a couple of seasons carried
off more than half of them by death.
Inquiries made last season failed to
show such a disease present in any part
of the state. The animals have been
particularly healthy and, if not check
ed by the interference of man, will
more than double their present area
next summer"
Prof Lantz has just issued bulletins
giving the general results of his expert
ments in discriminating prairie dogs and
gopherS. For prairie dogs he says car
bon biSulphide placed on cotton or other
ABSORBENT material, placed IN Ine uOS
burrow and the mouth of the hole stop
ped up, is the surest way to kill them,
but the cheapest is to soak wheat and
cornmeal in a. solution of strychnine and
put a little around the mouth of the
burrows.
To kill gophers he recommends put
ting a little strychnine in pieces of po-
tatoes and putting one or more pieces
in the runs of the gophers near the
freshest mounds. He says the gophers
are doing an immense amount of dam
age to alfalfa fields in some localities,
cutting off the roots and storing them
for winter food. He estimates that
there has been an actual cash loss of
100000 during the past year from the
work of gophers, and the pest is in
creasing so rapidly that it will be much
greater the coming year unless they
are killed Off
Prof Lantz is now experimenting to
discover some ontagious disease which
will kill off the prairie dogs.