iods of weeks or months, providing a
limited amount of information regarding dispersal. They followed no
definite pattern. In seven instances (five males and two females) the
young stayed on at the house beyond the age when they were completely
independent of the female. In at least two instances the female was
known to have moved away while the young remained. One female shifted to
a house 58 feet from the one where she had reared her litter of two, and
was accompanied by the young male, while the young female stayed on in
possession of the maternal house. Two months later this young female was
caught at a house 90 feet away, and an adult male was in possession of
her former house. One young male shifted to a house 220 feet from his
original home and remained there several months, but was recaptured once
back at the original location. Another male made a series of moves over
a period of weeks and finally settled in a house 490 feet from his first
home. One male who stayed in the maternal house all summer, and reached
adult size there, later moved several times, and was last recorded 900
feet away. One young female shifted 110 feet. In several instances
juveniles appeared abruptly in houses known to have been unoccupied
previously, and some of these houses were in poor repair. These young
had wandered from their maternal houses, for unknown reasons. On one
occasion a young woodrat was caught in a mouse trap set in a meadow, a
habitat into which adult woodrats would scarcely be expected to
venture.

_Feeding_

Rainey (1956) has listed 31 food plants that are used by the woodrat in
northeastern Kansas. He has emphasized that each rat usually obtains its
food from plants growing in the immediate vicinity of its house, and
that individuals thus differ greatly in their feeding, according to the
local vegetation. Therefore, with a sufficiently large number of
observations, the list of food plants might be greatly expanded, to
include most of the local flora, with the exception of the relatively
few kinds that have developed strongly repellent properties rendering
them unpalatable to herbivores in general.

At the quarry where one or more woodrats usually lived beneath metal
strips, as described previously (under the heading of "Commensals"), the
situation seemed to be especially favorable, despite the fact that the
metal offered no insulation from extremes of heat in summer and cold in
winter. Perhaps the rat had an alte