194 WooDRVFF, Birds of Shannon and Carter Counties, Mo. [tprii 



as they are locally termed. The ravines and valleys contain water 

 only after very heavy rains, a condition which occurred but twice 

 during my stay, on ^Nlarch 13 and ^lay 5. On these two occasions 

 there had been a heavy down-pour during the preceding night, seem- 

 ingly with little or no effect at first, but suddenly there was a roar 

 of water and the previously dry bed of Spring Valley, by which we 

 were encamped, was filled with a rushing torrent 4 to 10 feet deep 

 and 30 to 100 feet wide. In about three days the water had disap- 

 peared except for occasional small pools. The explanation of this 

 is to be found in the fact that the ground, which is largely of lime- 

 stone formation, is honey-combed with caves and sinkholes, the 

 latter sometimes a hundred feet deep. Springs appear only to dis- 

 appear as suddenly a few feet below. The water is of a greenish 

 blue color on account of the great amount of lime which it contains 

 in solution. 



At the time of my Visit, this section of the county was still clothed 

 with a virgin growth of pine and oak forest, of which the character- 

 istic birds were Turkeys, Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, Bachman's 

 Sparrows, and Pine Warblers. Unfortunately this forest is doomed, 

 for a lumber company was even then building a railroad into the 

 heart of the timber with a view to commencing lumbering operations 

 at once. Forests of pure pine (Pinus echinata) and -mixed pine 

 and oak cover the tops of the ridges and the plateau, changing to 

 pure stands of various species of oak on the steeper slopes. In the 

 valley bottoms are found a greater variety of trees, including such 

 species as walnut, sycamore, elm, silver maple, box elder, basswood, 

 buckeye, redbud, and others, and small thickets of witchhazel, 

 alder, sassafras and various species of small shrubs. Cardinals, 

 Kentucky Warblers, and Green-crested Flycatchers were the con- 

 spicuous birds of these bottoms. The forest is remarkably free 

 from all undergro^Ai;h, which is undoubtedly due to the long-con- 

 tinued custom of the settlers of burning over the ground each year, 

 under the erroneous idea that they thereby improve the grazing. 

 Clearings are few and far between and mostly in the narrow bottoms 

 of Black, Casto, and Spring Valleys. The largest is at Eudy, a 

 small settlement on the top of the plateau a mile and a half west of 

 our camp, where an area about three-quarters of a mile square had 

 been cleared and cultivated. Another small settlement. Ink, lay 



