;;:::::::=*£ THE MESQUITE WILDERNESS m::::;;;:: 



had often compared the House Wren with the Brown 

 Thrasher, and wondered if Nature could possibly sup- 

 ply a missing link between birds so unlike. Now, a 

 single missing link is a decidedly unscientific thing to 

 wish for, since, if we could trace them back through 

 the ages, the intergradations between two dissimilar 

 creatures would doubtless be very minute, and con- 

 sequently distributed through many thousands of 

 individuals and generations. But Nature, out of her 

 great abundance, often grants our desires when we 

 least expect it, and here in the niesquite wilderness 

 our missing link appeared to us. Cactus Wren the 

 books call him, but we might with more ajitness term 

 him Thrasher-toren, following the precedent of Wren- 

 tit and Quail-dove, for in appearance, if in nothing- 

 else, the bird divides the characteristics of thrasher 

 and wren. The whitish under parts of these giant 

 wrens are most conspicuously spotted with black, but 

 their backs are more in harmony with their surround- 

 ings. A harsh churr ! cJiurr ! is their only utterance, 

 apparently an alarm note, for at times as we passed 

 along, the mesquite fairly hummed with the sound, 

 surrounding and accompanying us. 



Even a mesquite wilderness has a boundary, and 

 ours thins out at the edge of the great barranca or 

 gorge, which slopes downward more than a thousand 

 feet to the silver thread at the bottom, — the begin- 

 ning' of the Rio Grande de Santiag^o. It is here a 



«4 95 -^ 



