NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 61 
SUDDEN DRYING UP OF STREAMS IN NEVADA. — In my article on the 
‘Truckee and Humboldt Valleys,” I casually call attention to the inter- 
mittent character of the mountain streams in that region. I state that 
they “run freely, even boisterously, during the night ne iy morning, 
but dry up totally in the lower part of their course by n My offered 
explanation was rather a surmise than a conclusion. " hind at that time 
ot 
in the January number of the ** Country Epa upon **The Forest 
Trees and Forest Life of North-west aii a.” He says “these streams 
are hid in high mountains, and the sun is not of sufficient power to melt 
the snow which forms their volume until late in the day, when they 
gather force, and again decrease after sunset until they are almost 
dry.” 
This solution of the mystery is very plausible and doubtless correct as 
regards the streams which came under Mr. Brown's observation. It will 
not apply so well, however, to those of the West Humboldt Mountains, 
of which I wrote. At the time my attention was drawn to 
ject there was no snow upon the range, even the high summit of Star 
Peak being perfectly bare. Had there been snow, I think the heat of the 
sun in August was sufficient to melt it any time in the day. I confess 
that my own offered explanation does not account for the great volume 
of water in the streams. Although the subject has no direct connection 
with natural history, I have ventured to call your attention to it 
order, if - sible, to draw out a theory gans will meet the facts.— 
Wow: 
iuxta Deposits. — During the summer of 1865, whilst digging a 
pit for the foundation of a bridge abutment on the Pacific Railroad, four 
miles north of Pleasant Hill, Missouri, after passing through soil and 
dark clays at the depth of twelve feet, a bed of gravel and decomposing 
remains of fresh-water shells was reached, from which I obtained the 
tooth of an Bison species of ox. 
n the year 1868, whilst prosecuting some geological examinations in 
Moultrie ndi. Illinois, I found in the bank Ac askaskia River, the 
pem with part of the vertebral column of an ox (probably Bos lati- 
The distance across the skull Diea the roots of the horns 
"Mir n twelve inches, and the same between the eyes. The horns were 
short, thick, and but slightly curved forward and upward. On the bank 
above there were trees growing two feet in diameter. The bones were 
e br 
Besides remains of ma malia, Donik and sticks of wood have 
been found in modified drift at twenty feet or more beneath the bn. 
In North Missouri, sticks of wood have been found at a depth of seventy- 
five feet, part of a grape-vine at forty feet, and in Illinois a piece of 
cedar has been obtained from more than a hundred feet beneath the sur- 
face. In Nevada, Missouri, a walnut log two feet thick was dug up from 
