4 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 56 
the species of birds and mammals which occur abundantly are 
altogether too small and too difficult to obtain with crude weapons 
to be useful as food. Among the birds in this class may be men- 
tioned nuthatches, hummingbirds, goldfinches, and sparrows. Robins 
and longcrested jays are also common, but a single meal for a fair- 
sized clan would require all that are to be found in any one canyon. 
Pinon and Woodhouse’s jays and mourning doves are abundant, 
probably as numerous now as they ever were, but not easy to secure 
even with modern weapons, and may be almost ignored as food 
birds for primitive people. Hawks, owls, and eagles are all too 
rare and too hard to obtain to be considered. Durmg the autumn 
grouse and turkeys were probably obtainable in considerable numbers, 
and, with the ducks and other water birds along the river, constituted 
the only really important food birds of the region. 
In case of the mammals, not infrequently a deer, elk, bear, or 
mountain sheep must have been obtained. With hundreds of people 
living on the mesas and in neighboring canyons, all constantly seeking 
to catch or kill these animals for food, we can not suppose their 
existence in much greater numbers than at present, when, though 
hunted with more effective weapons, they surely are not here hunted 
as persistently or by very many people. The same is true of the 
rabbits and squirrels. Whale they must have had constantly a 
small supply of such game, when the number of mouths awaiting it 
is considered, the meat diet of these ancient people was surely very 
limited. The other mammals were either too small or too rare 
to add materially to the food supply. 
This region is almost undisturbed by civilization and therefore 
affords an excellent field for the naturalist as well as for the study 
of ethnozoology. There seems no good reason for supposing any 
great change in the fauna of the locality since the period of its oceu- 
pancy by the people who constructed the pueblos and other dwellings 
long ago abandoned. Changes in faunas usually progress slowly, 
notwithstanding such conspicuous examples of rapid extermination 
or of introduction of species as are afforded by the bison, the passenger 
pigeon, and the English sparrow in America. Such examples, due 
to the superior facilities for destruction or introduction developed 
by the white race, are abnormal. It is quite possible that a few 
species besides elk and mountain sheep have disappeared from the 
vicinity within the period of human occupancy and that some others 
have extended their range into this area, though there is no evidence 
of such changes. The topography is certainly virtually the same 
as it has been for a very long period. If there has been since the 
beginning of human occupancy a general desiccation of the country 
sufficient to reduce the. possibilities in the line of agriculture, it 
would not necessarily have produced much, if any, change in the 
