THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS EXPEDITION INTO THE 

 JOHN DAY REGION OF OREGON. 



By C. E. McClung, University of Kansas, Lawrence. 



1"^HE University of Kansas takes pride in its natural-history 

 - museum, the largest of any state institution in the country, and 

 almost annually sends one or more expeditions into the field to add 

 to the collections. These explorations have covered a good part of 

 western North America, but until last summer no Kansas party had 

 visited the extreme northwestern portion of the United States. With 

 a desire to make the material in the museum as representative as 

 possible, the zoology department conducted an exploration through 

 the John Day region of central Oregon in search of mammalian 

 fossils. It has been the custom to record in the Transactions of 

 the Kansas Academy of Science the general nature of the explora- 

 tions conducted by the museum, and for this reason I thought it 

 desirable to make some mention of the one sent to Oregon. 



The party, consisting of Messrs. Martin, Baumgartner, Hoskins, 

 and myself, all of the zoology department, outfitted at La Grande 

 and started west over the Blue mountains on July 1. The collect- 

 ing ground had not been approached from this direction, and it was 

 hoped that some advantage might accrue from this fact, but expe- 

 rience showed that the limited size of the field placed no premium 

 upon any particular entrance into it. This will be apparent from 

 the description of the region which I will give. 



The John Day river has its head waters in the eastern range of 

 the Blue mountains, and in its earlier course traverses a roughly 

 triangular basin bounded by different spurs of these mountains. 

 Within this basin there are three divisions of the river — the north 

 fork, the east fork, and the south fork — which unite together be- 

 fore the stream finally turns north to flow into the Columbia river. 

 It is upon the main river, which, just before joining the north fork, 

 runs north and south, that the principal collecting grounds are 

 found. Through the elevated basin the various branches of the 

 river meander, cutting great canyons down through the Columbian 

 lavas that overspread the whole of this part of Oregon. The entire 

 region is indescribably rough, and when one views the relatively 

 low-lying basin from an elevation it appears as if a veritable carni- 



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