46 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA. [wo. 16. 
only rarely dotted by living plauts. In moist spots, particularly along 
the borders of the tiny sparkling streams, the red heather (Phyllodoce 
empetriformis) forms little beds and the delicate feathery Lutkea pectt- 
nata spreads a faint veil of green over the dark soil. In the drier 
parts of the forest hardly a plant is seen save now and then a solitary 
clump of prince’s pine (Chimaphila menziesi) or painted wintergreen 
(Pyrola picta). 
Late in September the hemlocks molt and the wind brings down show- 
ers of needles that falling on the tent at night sound like rain. Their 
color has now changed from green to golden brown and they sprinkle 
the black floor of the forest so thickly as to change its appearance. 
FOREST FIRES. 
During the past ten years the country about Shasta, particularly on 
the west and south, has been repeatedly devastated by forest fires. 
Here, as elsewhere, lumbermen and fires have destroyed the greater 
part of the timber on the lower slopes and adjacent plain, which are 
now covered by a dense chaparral of manzanita and buckbrush, dotted 
with scattered pines. Fortunately, the fires have not as yet spread 
upward far enough to do much damage to the Shasta firs of the middle 
timber belt. Whether the character of these trees and the freedom of 
the ground beneath from combustible material will prevent the spread 
of fire remains to be seen. Thus far the greatest harm has been done 
in the forests of ponderosa and sugar pines, where lumbering opera- 
tions are being carried on with painful vigor. 
While we were on the mountain, from the middle of July until the 
end of Septeinber, one or more fires, the result of vandalism or neglect, 
were raging continuously on the south and west slopes, and two of them 
did irreparable injury. One began near some woodcutters’ shanties, 3 
or £ miles below Wagon Camp, on the road to Sisson; the other and 
more destructive originated in the area covered by the lumbering opera- 
tions from MeCloud Mill and pushed swiftly up the Panther Creek 
slope, consuming the greater part of the only area of Pinus attenuata 
on Shasta and burning great tongues into the handsome fir forest on 
both sides of Wagon Camp, which it closely and almost completely 
surrounded. 
The fire that lasted longest in the summer of 1898 did the least harm. 
It consumed a worthless tract of manzanita chaparral between Black 
Butte and the mountain, and gave off a surprisingly enormous quantity 
of smoke, hiding the country to the west for a full month. During its 
continuance the entire mountain was often enveloped in smoke and 
when the wind was northwest, as it was a great deal of the time, 
showers of burned leaves fell daily at ourcamps. On August 2, when we 
were at work ou the rocky slopes above the head of Squaw Creek at an 
altitude of 9,500 feet, charred leaves fell so abundantly that we caught 
many in our hands. Great clouds of smoke rolled up between us and 
