DESCRIPTION OF CAMPS. 329 



intruder a repellent front of frightful thorny spines. Upon the whole, but 

 for the blue mass of Monte Diablo looming in the south, the long dim rano-e 

 of the Sierra Nevada bounding the eastern horizon, its crown of snow- 

 fields glittering in the sunlight, and the brown .Coast Range visible to the 

 westward, one might readily imagine a familiar scene in the Mississippi 

 Valley, so similar is the general aspect of the vegetation, in all its charac- 

 teristic features, to that of a semi-prairie district, during the correspondino- 

 season. Not less striking was the likeness between the bird-fauna of the 

 vicinity of Sacramento and that of a locality in the same latitude in the 

 Mississippi Valley, although, as regards the number of species, the latter 

 is by far the richer, since in Illinois, Missouri, or Iowa, an area having 

 a relative proportion of prairie and woodland corresponding to the locality 

 under consideration, will be found to possess at least one hundred species 

 of birds during the breeding-season, many more having been found in 

 certain districts.' 



Our camp was established in a very favorable locality, the outskirts of 

 the city, where the surroundings were a pleasing variety of meadow and 

 thicket, with the best collecting spots at convenient distance. The charac- 

 teristic birds were the Red-head Linnet (Carpodaciis frontalis), Gold- Finch 

 {Chrysomitris tristis), Yellow Warbler {Dendmca cestiva), Chipping Sparrow 

 (Spizella nri<!once), and Wood Pewee [Contopus richardsoni), among the oaks; 

 the l^lack-headed Grosbeak {Hedijmeles melanocephalus), Traill's Flycatcher 

 [Entpidouax puslUus , and Least Vireo {Vireo pusillus), in the willow and 

 cotton-wood copses;, the Blue Grosbeak (Guiraca ccendca), Lazuli Bunting 

 {Cyanospiza amoena), Bre^ver's Sparrow {Spizella hrcweri), and Lark Bunting 

 {Clwndestes grammaca), in the fields; Western King Bird (Tyrannus vertical is) 

 and Bullock's Oriole (Icterus bidloclci), in the large isolated cotton-wood 

 trees; the Long-tailed House Wren {Thryonmncs spilnrns), and, if near 

 water, the Black Pewee (Sayornis nigricans), about dwellings, with a great 

 variety of water-foAvl, identical in species with those inhabiting similar 

 places in the Eastern States, found in the tule sloug-hs. 



' In the lower Wabiish Valley, of Indiana or Illinois, more than one huudrod and 

 fifty species are known to breed. [See Prpc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., XVI, 1874.J 



