No, 16, NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA, October, 1899, 
RESULTS OF A BIOLOGICAL SURVEY OF MOUNT SHASTA, 
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. 
By C. Hart MERRIAM. 
INTRODUCTION. 
At the close of the field season of 1897 the Biological Survey had 
nearly completed a reconnoissance of Washington and Oregon, and in 
previous years had carried its operations over extensive tracts in south- 
ern, middle, and northeastern California, so that with the exception of 
a rather large area in northern California fully two-thirds of the Pacific 
States had been covered. In 1898, therefore, the unworked part of 
northern California, reaching from the Madeline Plains on the east to 
the Pacific Ocean on the west, and from the Oregon boundary on the 
north to Lassen Butte and adjacent parts of the Sierra on the south, 
came to be the principal field of our investigations. In this area Mount 
Shasta occupies a nearly central position. 
All high mountains, particularly those that stand alone, are likely to 
throw light on the problems of geographic distribution and are worthy 
of careful study. Shasta, not only because of its great altitude, but 
even more because of its intermediate position between the Sierra and 
the Cascades, promised an instructive lesson, and was therefore chosen 
as a base station for part of the field work of 1898. 
From work previously done in the Sierra Nevada of California and 
the Cascade Range of Oregon it was known that many species of ani- 
mals and plants are common to both ranges, and many restricted to 
one or the other. Shasta, lying between the two, was expected to share 
the common features of both, and in addition afford the northernmost 
limit of Sierra species, the southernmost limit of Cascade species, or 
an overlapping of both, so that its fauna and flora, other things being 
equal, should be richer than either. But Shasta proved very much 
drier than either the Sierra or the Cascades, and consequently many 
species common to the two ranges were absent, and the total number 
was less than was expected. Nevertheless, the mountain shares a large 
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