1 IS 2 LLOYD on Birds of Weston Texas. [Ju'y 



is well watered. Spring and Dove Creeks, with the South 

 Concho, flow into the Middle Concho, which unites with the 

 the North Concho at San Angelo, Tom Green County (Lat. 31 

 22', Long. 23 , 19' W.), and forms the Main Concho, which, 

 after a general easterly course of about forty-five miles, receiving 

 Kickapoo, Lipan (Euterpe on map), Duck, Mustang, and Horse 

 Creeks, falls into the Colorado River, in the extreme east of the 

 county. The creeks are well timbered with pecan, elm, hack- 

 berry, a species of walnut, and willows, etc., and have well 

 defined bottoms of an average width of about fifty yards, but fre- 

 quently are half a mile wide, densely grown with scrub mesquit, 

 small groves of hackberry, wild china, and other small trees, over- 

 run with poison ivy, and laden with parasitic mistletoe. At the 

 heads of the larger creeks is generally a considerable growth of 

 various small oaks, while the hillsides are covered with shin-oak 

 and a species of laurel ; and in Tom Green County the head 

 draws of the creeks are full of cedar groves. There are no hills 

 worth noting in Concho County, where the surface is level 

 prairie, gently rolling and broken only by the creeks and dry 

 ravines. It was once treeless but is now being rapidly covered 

 with dwarf mesquit ; in many places there is not even a shrub ; 

 other parts are well grown with cat-claw, algarita, chapparal, 

 wahilla (a kind of evergreen) , and nopal catcus. In summer it 

 is covered with hundreds of flowering plants, of which the ver- 

 bena and lupin are most numerous. Tom Green County is 

 more broken and has well-defined chains of hills dividing the 

 upper water courses. They are not timbered, however, and, like 

 the Castle Mountains on the plains, exercise no appreciable in- 

 fluence on our birds. The Pecos River is entirely devoid of tim- 

 ber, with exception of the ubiquitous button bush, and has no 

 bird-life whatever peculiar to it, owing no doubt to the alkaline 

 nature of its waters. There is a lake of fresh water on the plains 

 which I have never examined. About a dozen species of catcus 

 occur. A swamp on the head of South Concho is the only 

 ground of the kind in the district; this has some very large live 

 oak studding its borders, and water oak in it. Acres of thistles, in 

 various places in both counties, form in winter admirable feed- 

 ing grounds for various birds. The soil is very fertile, and un- 

 derlaid with limestone, of the middle Eocene. Stock-raising 

 was, until the last few years, the only pursuit ; now farms are 



