54 



THE DESEET 



Desert 

 animals in 

 the basin. 



Birds, 



Lizards 

 and STMkes. 



intense heat. Plants cannot live by sunlight 

 alone. 



Nor will the desert animals inhabit an abso- 

 lute waste. The coyote and the wild cat do not 

 relish life in this dip in the earth. They care 

 little for heat and drouth, but the question of 

 food appeals to them. There is nothing to eat. 

 Even the abstemious jack-rabbit finds living 

 here something of a difficulty. Many kinds of 

 tracks are found in the unerusted silt — tracks 

 of coyotes, gray wolves, sometimes mountain 

 lions — but they all run in straight trails, show- 

 ing the animals to be crossing the basin to the 

 mountains, not prowling or hunting. So, too, 

 you will occasionally find birds — linnets, bobo- 

 links, mocking-birds, larks — but they are seen 

 one at a time, and they look weary like land 

 birds far out at sea that seek a resting-place on 

 passing vessels. They do not belong to the 

 desert and are only stopping there temporarily 

 on some long flight. Snakes and lizards are not 

 particular about their abiding-place, and yet 

 they do not care to live in a land where there 

 is no bush or stone to creep under. You meet 

 with them very seldom. Practically there is no 

 life of any kind that is native to the place. 



Is there any beauty, other than the dunes. 



