1923 



INTRODUCTION 



October 25-29, 1913, Mr. Vernon Bailey visited McCleary's Ranch and 

 Stone Cabin Canyon on the west side of the range, climbino- to 9,200 feet and 

 sending a bird report and a few specimens to the Biological Survey. 



July 28-Augnst 15, 1918, Mr. A. B. Howell and his assistant, Mr. Tjiillier 

 Little, collected for the Survey from a base camp in Madera Canyon, wiierc 

 he secured about a hundred and seventy-five specimens, which are now in the 

 Biological Survey collection of the National Museum. These, added to those 

 of Dr. Nelson, give considerably over five hundred specimens from the Santa 

 Rita Mountains of which there is no published record. 



From November 20, 1920, to May 6, 1921, while Mr. Bailey was engaged 

 in the study of desert mammals at the west foot of the range, we were camped 



Fig. 2. Saxta Rita Mountains from tii^ .. ikuiwest 

 Madera, or White House, Canyon leads up to the saddle between Old Baldy 

 (9432 feet) on the left and Mt. Hopkins (8072 feet) on the right. Below the moun- 

 tains, mesquite, catsclaw, cholla and green pad cactus and ocotillo are scattered over 



the desert slope. Photograph by Dr. Charles T. Vorhics 



at 4,000 feet, at what is given as McCleary's Ranch on the 1905 contonr map 

 of the Geological Survey, but which is now Nicholson's Ranch, wliere the 

 headquarters of the U. S. Range Reserve Experiment Station is located. Sit- 

 uated at the upper edge of the Lower Sonoran zone, Upper Sonoran species 

 are brought down by the wash from Stone Cabin Canyon, and migrants and 

 summer residents naturally pass through on their way to the higher levels, 

 so that I was enabled to obtain a list of a hundred and twenty species, most 

 of them seen between 4^000 and 4,500 feet. 



