Excerpt from Pioneering The gopher, which ought to be borne on the shield of Illinois, is really a marmot, - a little squirrel with long hind legs, sitting like a watch-dog at the ddol' of its lodge, and skipping over the ground like a tiny kangaroo. The name is given in Canada, not only to the prairie-dog, but to a long-legged rat, which naturalists decline to class With the marmots. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.