342 riiOCEEDIXaS or the national museum. vol.xxi. 



for mammals, dropping them in ci^evices of the rocks, beside logs, brush 

 heaps, stone heaps, in trees and hollow stumps, and beside the water; 

 some in runways, others in open spots, in thickets, and a few at random, 

 until the whole neighborhood was so beset with traps that not even the 

 house cat escaped them. Trapping was gradually extended upward 

 from the lower levels to tlie slopes of the East Kill and Plateau moun- 

 tains, and finally to the top of Hunter Mountain, the highest of the 

 neighboring peaks and second only to Slide Mountain, which exceeds 

 it in height by some 200 feet, though it is much less massive. We also 

 trapped one night around Kaaterskill Lake. 



The interior region of the (Jatskills surrounding Kaaterskill Junction 

 belongs, as a whole, to the Canadian, the lowest of the Boreal fauna;, 

 though slightly mixed with the Alleghenian in the farming lands on the 

 banks of Schoharie Creek. There is some evidence, however, that 

 certain mammals of the Transition and Upper Austral Zones, as the 

 New England cottontail {Lepns Hylraticit^t ransitionalis), deer mouse 

 {Peromysms lei(copus), and gray fox ( Urocyon cinereoargenteus), have 

 but lately extended their ranges to this locality by following up the 

 clearings. 



Though again well wooded, the barest tags and remnants alone remain 

 of the si^lendid primeval forests that once covered this area. All is 

 second-growth except in the rockiest gulches, whence the lumber could 

 not have been extricated, and about the rocky summits of a few moun- 

 tains of the East Jewett ranges, including East Kill Mountain. The 

 hills must have been early stripped of their timber, to judge from the 

 indications of a few remaining stumps and rotten logs, nearly all of 

 which were conifera*. The woods are now very thoroughly mixed, 

 deciduous trees of numerous species mingling, almost everywhere, with 

 the evergreen conifenc On the mountain sides, at the present time, 

 nothing is seen of the regular succession of altitudinal forest zones 

 which may have existed in times past, before the timber was cut. The 

 black spruce, balsam, hemlock, yew, and white pine are the only conifera; 

 seen by us in the interior valleys of the Catskills, and all grow on the 

 banks of the Schoharie, near Kaaterskill Junction (altitude 1,700 feet). 

 Of these only the black spruce and balsam occupy the mountain peaks. 

 The hemlock and yew scarcely rise on the mountain slopes above 2,500 

 feet; the white pine is local on the creek banks, and the spruce and 

 balsam increase in abundance from the lowest to the highest level. 

 Of deciduous trees, which are at least as numerous as the coniferous, 

 and in the number of species much more so, the maple, beech, birch, 

 ash, cherry, aspen, basswood, elm, and willow are the most abundant. 

 The red juniper, pitch pine, chestnut, hickory, butternut, and oak are 

 conspicuously absent, although they are characteristic trees of the 

 Hudson River slopes of these mountains, extending up to the Catskill 

 Mountain House, at which point their ranges end rather abruptly. 

 Among the smaller plants, many species were collected in the vicinity 



