12 THE NAUTILUS. 
religious ceremony, a prayer for rain. Here were seven hun- 
dred spectators from coast to coast, as interested and respectful 
as these deeply religious Indians themselves. About sixty or 
seventy live snakes were carried around the ring in the mouths 
of the priests, one snake at atime. Twenty or more of these 
exhibits were the common poisonous rattler—the side-winder 
or Edwards’ massasauga (Sistruris catenatus edwardsi B. & G.), 
and the other the prairie rattler (Crotalus confluentus Say). No 
fangs were pulled, no persons bitten, no fainting, none were 
awe-stricken. There was no frenzy. Everybody cool and sat- 
isfied. Even those who paid a dollar for a watermelon or fifty 
cents for a loaf of bread ate calmly, politely and said nothing. 
The party again divided at Holbrook, and at Galup Mr. 
Clute left for home and Cummings and Ferriss made a side trip 
to Montecello, Utah, via. the Ship Rock agency and Cortez, 
Colorado, thus avoiding the Ute Mountain and passing over the 
toes of Mesa Verde with its great ruins. 
The Blue Range, known on some of the maps as the Altas 
Abajo, is about eight miles from Montecello. The walking is 
good and the lumber road lands one at the sawmill on the 
north fork of the Montezuma Creek, the very heart of the moun- 
lain range. These peaks are covered by thick groves of aspen 
and spruce with large open spaces of coarse grass and slides of 
sandstone fringed with wild currants and raspberries. Here 
again Oreohelix y. cwmmingst was found abundant in the shale 
and also scattered among the rock slides and the aspens, with 
O. cooperi and O. depressa. At station 365 a few cummingsi 
were found approaching the albino form. At station 370 in 
tall grass O. cooperi was variable in size, also in the same en- 
vironment in the vicinity of the copper mines, our Sta. 366. 
As a rul3 these were much smaller than those found in the 
aspens. The collecting conditions are ideal and this range 
should he further explored. In the few days given to the work 
collections were not made farther than a couple of miles from 
the sawmill in any direction. Some of the maps show that it 
is about forty miles from the sawmill to the Elk ridge on the 
west. 
It was heart-breaking to leave without shaking hands with 
