12 THE NAUTILUS. 



religious ceremony, a prayer for rain. Here were seven hun- 

 dred spectators from coast to coast, as interested and respectful 

 as these deeply religious Indians themselves. About sixty or 

 seventy live snakes were carried around the ring in the mouths 

 of the priests, one snake at a time. Twenty or more of these 

 exhibits were the common poisonous rattler the side-winder 

 or Edwards' massasauga (SiMruris catenatus edivardsi B. & G.), 

 and the other the prairie rattler (Crotalus confluentiis Say). No 

 fangs were pulled, no persons bitten, no fainting, none were 

 awe-stricken. There was no frenzy. Everybody cool and sat- 

 isfied. Even those who paid a dollar for a watermelon or fifty 

 cents for a loaf of bread ate calmly, politely and said nothing. 



The party again divided at Holbrook, and at Galup Mr. 

 Clute left for home and Cummings and Ferriss made a side trip 

 to Montecello, Utah, via. the Ship Rock agency and Cortez, 

 Colorado, thus avoiding the Ute Mountain and passing over the 

 toes of Mesa Verde with its great ruins. 



The Blue Range, known on some of the maps as the Altas 

 Abajo, is about eight miles from Montecello. The walking is 

 good and the lumber road lands one at the sawmill on the 

 north fork of the Montezuma Creek, the very heart of the moun- 

 lain range. These peaks are covered by thick groves of aspen 

 and spruce with large open spaces of coarse grass and slides of 

 sandstone fringed with wild currants and raspberries. Here 

 again Oreohelix y. cummingsi was found abundant in the shale 

 and also scattered among the rock slides and the aspens, with 

 0. cooperi and 0. depressa. At station 365 a few cummingsi 

 were found approaching the albino form. At station 370 in 

 tall grass 0. cooperi was variable in size, also in the same en- 

 vironment in the vicinity of the copper mines, our Sta. 366. 

 As a rula these were much smaller than those found in the 

 aspens. The collecting conditions are ideal and this range 

 should he further explored. In the few days given to the work 

 collections were not made farther than a couple of miles from 

 the sawmill in any direction. Some of the maps show that it 

 is about forty miles from the sawmill to the Elk ridge on the 

 west. 



It was heart-breaking to leave without shaking hands with 



