The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1921-02-11
risoUIsITloN ON THE sALi
MEMBERSHIPS TO ExTER
INMATE IT
Belleview. Fla, FEB. 10, 1921.

TO the Editor Banner:
No one won the shotgun shells Of
Tered last February by an official Of
the Belleview Gun and Rod Club to
the members killing five or more sala-
manders during the ensuing twelve
months one box of shells for every
bunch of five animals.
One memper shot four of them and
two others three each, trapping was
prohibited.
1t was not expected that many of
the shells would be claimed, for hunt
ing salamanders with a gun entails
"watchful waiting, often of the most
tedious sort. Finding them while
they are at work throwing up the
mounds which dot fields, forests and
yards, alike most strangers seeing the
mounds for the first time fancy they
are great ant-hills lis largely a matter
of luck, they are thrown up in such
haphazard directions that the trail
never can be followed with any de-
gree of certainty
Although suggestive of a new form
of field and garden sport the offer of
the Belleview club official really was
designed to draw attention to. the adj
visibility of exterminating the little
pests. There are fields and gardens
Ehich are almost literally undermined
by the animals unceasing burrowing,
while too numerous in Florida and
other southern states, they are more
plentiful on the western plains and in
Kansas and Nebraska it, is estimated
they do several millions of dollars
damage to the crops each year.
However. if the Floridian said "sala-
mander" to the Kansan, the latter
scarcely would know what he meant.
For out west the salamander is the
pocket gopher and inquiry instituted
by Belleyiew Gun Club member has
seemed to prove that the Westerners
are right.
Properly, salamander is a water
lizard and how the term came to be
applied to an animal Of the rat fam
lily that burrows and lives under
ground and shuns water is beyond
guessing. At any rate, the u. S. Bu-
reau of Biology is authority for the
statement that it is a pocket gopher
beyond dispute and the pocket gopher
is essentially pouched rat, so-called
because Of the pocket or pouches in
its jaws, which it fills with the earth,
that it brings to the surface and de.
posts in mounds out of all proper
tion to its size.
Despite the biological definition,
probably it always will remain .sala-
mander' to those who so long have
called it by that name. It will be
doubly hard to call it gopher in
this part of the country where what
is known as a gopher is land turtle.
Some of the dictionaries justify this
definition but in response to the Bel
leview inquiry, the Bureau Of Biology
states that there is no justification
for it. The land turtle is a tortoise
and in no way related to the rat or
gopher family even though it may
burrow in the ground.
All of which should be OF more than
passing interest to Floridians. It may
interest them also to learn that the
subject is of such Importance that the
Bureau of Biology is now preparing a
special bulletin relating to pocket
gophers, or "salamanders' meanwhile
there already is available at the De
partment of Agriculture bulletin
dealing with rodent pests in general,
the pocket gopher among them, which
illustrates several traps designed for
their destruction, also a probe for To-
eating the gopher's tunnels and for in
sorting in them the poisoned pieces Of
sweet potato which is the method
recommended where the pests ar nu-
merous.