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tively abundant, and we had more ready access to an extensive 

 pronghorn range in the direction of the Caparote. During 

 our second evening here, Captain Funcke returned from the 

 day's hunt with the skins and meat of two antelopes. He had 

 had to bUndfold, hobble, and tether his blood-shy mule before 

 he could lash the carcasses upon her back. From sunset 

 until breakfast the coyotes howled and howled all around our 

 encampment. When we answered them from our blankets, 

 they redoubled their outcry. 



The season was the height of spring in Pattie Basin. The 

 breeding of the desert birds was just beginning — that is, 

 most of them had commenced to build nests, but few had laid 

 their eggs. Moths were replacing the armies of caterpillars; 

 other common insects were wasps, bees, flies, and four or 

 five abundant beetles. The latter were especially in evidence 

 about dusk. A shiny black Carabid, Calosoma parvicollis, 

 was exceedingly predaceous, puncturing the Hemileiica cater- 

 pillars with its huge horizontal jaws, and devouring the custard 

 within. When disturbed, it fled by running, and, if captured, 

 it exuded a drop of offensive fluid that smelled like ink, only 

 worse. A gray, antique-looking Tenebrionid, Cryptoglossa 

 verrucosa, more like an armored fossil than a creature of this 

 age, seemed to be a burrower. It was also a sort of opossum 

 among insects, for it pretended to be dead whenever it was 

 discovered. Still another beetle, a black Meloid, Phodaga 

 ■alticeps, had the habit of raising its elytra straight up over its 

 back, so that they might serve as sails as it scurried before the 

 wind across bare patches of the desert floor. Finally, a 

 fourth beetle, also a Meloid, and known to science as Cysteo- 

 demus armatus, possessed a round, hunch-backed body, which, 

 since its pitted surface was always covered with white dust, 

 resembled a bag of meal. The most extraordinary point 

 about this insect was that in calm weather one could quite 

 distinctly hear its footfalls on the sand. It used to give me a 

 strange sensation to crouch down among the creosote bushes 

 at the hour of sunset, and listen to the beetles scampering 

 about. 



To me, twilight always seemed a mysterious hour in the 



