24 Gbe Marbler 



after rabbits; but unquestionably, sharp noses had discovered and sharp teeth 

 had been crunching the contents of many a cunningly hidden nest, among 

 the growths; during all the weeks that had intervened since the first pair of 

 Horned Larks had scratched a nest-hollow in the gumbo soil. 



The nests of this race are thoroughly Horned Lark-like. They are 

 chiefly made of grasses; and lined with the fruit of a dwarfed, carex-like 

 plant that grows everywhere in the gumbo regions. 



The three illustrations accompanying this paper give graphic witness 

 to the use of the three forms of nesting site already cited: No. i, taken by 

 flash-light, shows an unusually grassy spot, among the prairie herbage; from 

 which the stranger may draw conclusion as to the scantiness of Wyoming 

 range grasses; (whereon, nevertheless, myriads of cattle winter and summer: 

 and wax fat for the block). Many lark nests are placed thus, beside droppings 

 of horses or cattle; usually the latter. (This habit is shared, in a marked 

 degree, by the Long-billed Curlew: see, Silloway, " Birds of Fergus County, 

 Montana"). 



No. 2 is, incidentally, of greater interest than both its fellows. The 

 protective conditions which are depicted by it were put to the sharpest of 

 all tests: The location of this site was near a corner of one of the long, 

 long " drift "-fences of the Hundred-and-One Ranch; one mile from the 

 Belle Fourche River; and a half-mile from one of the great discharging sta- 

 tions for the Texas cattle which pour into Northern Wyoming, in myriads, 

 whensoever the great drought-demon lays its clutches upon the Lone-Tree 

 State. 



This nest location of a Desert Horned Lark lay in a lean stretch of 

 gumbo; (for, even in gumbo, there are degrees of leanness. The same stiff, 

 clayey soil which will produce, along the washes, growths of white sage 

 reaching upward to five-foot heights becomes, in its extreme leanness, so 

 forbidding that it will but harbor, here and there, a^ little wisp of a black 

 sage that rivals, in its pitifulness, even the dwarfed salixes of the upper 

 reaches of the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. ) The one insignificant sage de- 

 picted stood utterly alone. There was none in the camera's field of view; 

 and there was none for many feet, on any side. The drift fence raised its 

 barbey barrier some ninety or a hundred feet to the left; while on the right 

 was perhaps fifty feet more, of lateral area, that was frequented by the bands 

 of cattle which, pouring forth from the stock cars in half-famished proces- 

 sion, streamed upward from the tracks and over the hills to the few half-fer- 

 tile valleys of open range beyond. 



Along this " road-way " there had passed, the week before this picture 

 was taken, a band of fifteen-hundred "dogeys. " We passed through the 

 " bunch ", a half-hour after they left their cars; and leaner kine no mortal 

 ever eyed. Any sturdy ranch-man might easily have shouldered three- 



