ee 



RANDOM NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY. 



the owner had a good gun, steady nerves, 

 and good luck. 



Men will not cease to go shooting ; but 

 cannot some one with the ability' to write 

 popularl}-, so work upon their sensibilities 

 that thay will cease destruction within a 

 reasonable limit ; and if legitimate game is 

 scarce, so control themselves as to husband 

 their cartridges for another trip? 



Surely the women are not alone to blame. 



LovELAND, Col., July 20, 1886. 



As probably but a small percentage of 

 3'our readers ever had an opportunity to 

 scale the Old Rockies, perhaps a brief ac- 

 count of a trip that I have just undertaken 

 will be of interest to some of the real lovers 

 of nature. 



On the 6th of July we hired a man and 

 team to haul us and our outfit as far as Wil- 

 low Park, which is about eight miles west 

 of Estes Park, which lies at the foot of 

 Long's Peak ; that is as far as we could 

 travel by wagon. The rest of the journey 

 must be accomplished either mounted on a 

 bronco, or on foot. I preferred the latter, 

 as I feel safer on terra Jirma. We reached 

 there about noon the next day, discharged 

 our teamster, and pitched our tent, killed 

 a few ground squirrels for supper which we 

 disposed of with a vengeance, and soon 

 turned in. The next morning we started 

 out on a collecting trip. We found many 

 species of birds but they were all in poor 

 plumage and entirelj' useless for specimens. 

 We found Williamson's red naped, Lewis', 

 Harris', and red shafted woodpeckers, 

 Steller's jays, black-billed magpies, robins, 

 Arctic blue birds, turtle doves, plumbeous 

 vireos, Parkman's wrens, and a few others, 

 and they all appeared to be breeding. We 

 also found jack rabbits and cotton tails, 

 woodchucks, four-striped and thirteen- 

 striped chipmunks, and one old female 

 dusk}' grouse, and a brood of about ten 

 j-oung. They were about as large as the 

 eastern quail. 



The next morning we started on foot to 

 try to reach timber line, (that is the line 

 beyond which no timber grows), which the 

 settlers claimed to be about five miles, but 

 they admitted they had never footed it. I 

 thought it was nearer twenty by the time we 

 reached it, which was accomplished in about 



four hours. We followed what is called the 

 Big Thompson or old Indian trail that 

 passes clear over the divide. I have no 

 doubt that it was a better road when they 

 used it than it is now% as it is almost im- 

 passable at places because of fallen logs. 

 Within a few years there have been exten- 

 sive forest fires through that section, which 

 was a very heavily timbered tract, and 

 the trees have fallen in all directions ; 

 this makes bad traveling. The settlers 

 of to-da}- are either too indolent or have not 

 the time the red skins had to clear, so the 

 poor bronco had to face the music ; but 

 we had one advantage, if we could not climb 

 over we could crawl under. The clouds 

 looked very threatening, the thunder rolled 

 in the distance, and by the time we reached 

 timber line the rain commenced in good 

 earnest. This is where, at this time of the 

 3'ear, you can experience a good thunder- 

 storm at noon, almost everj- day. I 

 think we have not hUd above six fine days 

 in six weeks ; but the storms are mostly 

 confined to the mountains, although some- 

 times they get off on a tear. One man 

 in this vicinit}' lost two hundred and three 

 sheep by hail one day last week, and at 

 least three-fifths of all the wheat crop in this 

 count}' has been destro3'ed b}' the same 

 enemy. When the storm had abated, it was 

 time to start back to camp, so we had no 

 opportunity to collect at all that day, 

 although we saw several varieties of Lepi- 

 doptera new to me. The next day we 

 started Out again, and a third party accom- 

 panied us as guide, as we intended to reach 

 the divide if possible. We packed one 

 horse with our camping outfit, and our guide 

 rode a second horse with guns and rifle ; 

 we had no use for the latter but then it was 

 good company. Once in a while a fellow 

 will meet a grizzh' or a hungry- mountain 

 lion, but they won't wake up the camp if 

 they can steal your grub without it. 



We footed it, as before. The storm 

 again set in before we had gone far, and 

 sent us hunting for a friendly rock. It de- 

 la\'ed us some, but we made timber line in 

 time to put in about two hours collecting. 

 The only birds we found were American 

 tit-larks, broad-tailed hummers, interme- 

 diate white-crowned sparrows, and one pair 

 of Townsend's flycatchers. The rocks 

 around where we camped were swarming 



