The Oologist. 



vol. XIX. NO. 



ALBION, N. Y., SEPTEMBER, 1902. Whole No. 19s 



The Oologist. 



A Monthly Publication Devoted to 



OOLOGY, ORNITHOLOGY AND 



TAXIDERMY. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and items of Interest to the 

 student of Birds, their Nests and Eggs, solicited 

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The Birds of Death Valley. 



BY HARRY H. DUNN. 



On the sixth day of last November, I 

 left Los Angeles for Johannesburg, a 

 -aDidly diminishing mining camp some 



250 miles out on the Mojave Desert. 

 My ultimate destination was that weird, 

 much-lied about country known as 

 Death Valley, but the railroad pene- 

 trates this arid region no farther than 

 "Joburg," and there I was to join the 

 rest of the party for a two months trip. 

 Now right here I am going to drop the 

 thread of my tale and locate Death Val- 

 ley fairly in the minds of my readers. 

 The Great Basin of the United States 

 has four distinct sinks or drainage ba- 

 sins. One of these has its deepest 

 point at the Great Salt Lake, another 

 at Mono Lake, and still another at Sal- 

 ton sea. Now the fourth is Death Val- 

 ley, which you can easily find plainly 

 marked on almost any map. This val- 

 ley is about 75 miles long, by from seven 

 to twenty-five wide. It is the sink of 

 the Amargosa River, but is so heavily 

 encrusted with saline deposit (salt, 

 borax, alum, soda and nitre) that the 

 water, save for certain isolated springs, 

 is unfit for drinking. The valley was 

 so named on account of the fact that in 

 1850, a Mormon emigrant train, cross- 

 ing from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, 

 came near perishing to a man, in fact 

 only a few escaped over the mountains 

 into San Bernardino. The principal 

 vegetation of this country consists of 

 mesquite brush of two kinds, the 

 twisted or "screw" mesquite, and the 

 "tree" mesquite. The former of these 

 two is very dense and equally thorny, 

 forming an excellent cover for wild 

 rats, with which this country abounds. 

 The valley, being some 400 feet below 

 sea level, is surrounded by lofty and 

 precipitious mountains whose varied 

 mineral hues belie the rainbow. 

 We loafed around Johannesburg 



