OCT., 1899.] 



MAMMALS. 



99 



Zapus pacificus jMeniam. A'alley fJeiboa. 



Only two specimens of tliis little-known species were secured and 

 one of tliese was destroyed in the trap. Tliey were caught in thickets 

 on the banks of Little Shasta Creek Sei)teniber 20 by E. T. Fisher. 



Ochotona schisticeps (Merriani). Cony; Pika. 



Kelatively rare and confined to small and widely separated colonies. 

 During our circuit of the mountain, made near timberline the latter 

 part of July, we saw what we took to be signs of conies among rocks 

 east of Mud Creek Canyon, but finding no more believed we had been 

 mistaken, until the evening of July 24, when we camped on some rivu- 

 lets of snow water on the north side of Shastina. Here we found a 

 small scattered colony reaching up in the slide rock from about 8,000 

 to nearly 10,000 feet, and a specimen was secured by Vernon Bailey. 

 The next day we found signs in Cascade Gulch a mile or two northwest 

 of ITorse Camp. Later, 

 when camped in the al- 

 pine hemlocks on the 

 small west branches of 

 Squaw Creek, we found 

 a colony in the slide 

 rock close by. Conies 

 were afterwards found 

 on both sides of Eed 

 Butte and on the east 

 side of Gray Butte, and 

 Osgood heard one near 

 the head of Mud Creek 

 Canyon. In all, 14 speci- 

 mens were collected. 



This species differs in 

 habits and voice from 

 those of the Eocky Mom i - 

 tains; it is less noisy and less often heard in the middle of the day, for 

 which reason it is more apt to escape detection, and its common note, 

 instead of the usual 'bleat,' is a loud shrill eh^ eJi,' or e/i' eh' eh\ It 

 seems to be most active in the late afternoon and on moonlight even- 

 ings, and its voice is heard at all hours of the night. 



On most mountains where conies live, their well known accumula- 

 tions of plants of various kinds, cut and piled on the rocks to dry, are 

 conspicuous objects. But on Shasta, where I often saw the animals 

 carrying freshly cut plants to their dens in the slide rock, I failed to 

 find a single 'haystack.' In one place a few fresh stems of Polygon nm 

 newherryi, with its large broad leaves, were seen, and in another a large 

 accumulation of old brown leaves of the same species mixed with a larger 

 quantity of I'hyllodoce empetriformis — apparently left over from the 

 previous year. But the only real 'haystack' found on the mountain by 



Fio. 33. — Rock cony (Ochotona (■cliUtice^is) — Pliotograidied by 

 r. SteplifiLS. 



