34 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOÖLOGY. 
uplifted from a previously deformed and denuded region, and much 
dissected in the current cycle of erosion. 
Like so many other isolated ranges in the Great basin the Canyon 
range offers a well limited subject for a geological thesis. Oak City 
and Lemington, the latter reached by rail, would be good centers for 
excursions. Oak City is a characteristic oasis, absolutely dependent 
on the little stream from the mountain, by which its fields are irrigated. 
Its limit of population is about reached. 
THe House RANGE. 
The Sevier Desert. We crossed the Sevier desert westward from 
Oak City on July 18, stopping a few hours at Deseret on the Sevier 
river on our way to the House range. Several Bonneville shore lines 
were passed as we descended the gradual detrital slope southwest of 
the Canyon range. After riding some miles across the dreary ex- 
panse of the desert plain, we saw on the distant horizon first the trees 
and then in nearer view the haystacks and houses of Deseret. This 
oasis is watered from Sevier river, of which the channel is there 150 
or 200 feet wide; the bed is 10 or 15 feet below the plain; at the time 
of our crossing there was only a shallow sluggish stream wandering 
in it. In recent years the water supply has proved insufficient for 
the fields; many of the trees by which the wide streets were once some- 
what shaded have died, leaving the town with a desolate and sad- 
dened appearance, in contrast with the more thrifty condition of Oak 
City and various other towns through which we had passed. A reser- 
voir is now in construction on the Sevier east of the Canyon range; 
the day we ascended that range, the site of the dam was seen, well de- 
termined by a notch cut by the river in a low ridge. As in all such 
cases, the relief gained by water storage will be at its best when the res- 
ervoir first comes into service; it will be 15 miles long, 14 miles wide, 
60 feet deep at the deepest, and will, it is estimated, supply 100,000 
acre-feet of water. But the progressive filling of the basin by in- 
washed waste will cause its slow but continuous deterioration, for 
which even an increased height of the dam will provide only a tem- 
porary remedy. As a provisional expedient, the reservoir is of unques- 
tionable value, but the importance of such devices is overestimated by 
those who look on them as the means of a permanent rescue from desert 
conditions. At the best, the area irrigable from reservoirs in this re- 
gion can be but a very small fraction of the unmitigated desert, because 
