Excerpt from Natural History of the Prairie Dog in Kansas States since Pleistocene times. TO the Indians he was import ant as a source of food, especially when large game was scarce. In the middle l8oo's, when explorers, trappers, and pioneers crossed the plains west of the Missouri River and east of the Rocky Moun tains, the monotony of the long arduous trips was relieved by the antics of the gregarious, small mammal, the prairie dog. Letters and diaries mentioned the animal and frequently contained highly exaggerated accounts of the social structure of prairie dog colonies. 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.