208 Rambles of a Botanist in New Mexico. [ April, 
The rattlesnake is slow and sluggish in his movements, and 
prefers shelter in damp or cold weather. When intent upon prey 
he is less readily induced to rattle, but at other times his stroke 
is usually preceded by a warning. When mating during May _ 
they are more vicious than at other times. The danger fromthe 
rattlesnake’s bite has been popularly over-estimated. I have ob- 4 
served a great many cases among the larger animals; fatal results 
have been the marked exception. Among horses and cattle not 
one case directly fatal has come within my notice. 
In man, in eleven cases there were three deaths, two of which 
were most probably through ignorance or improper attention. 
The rattlesnake is not dependent upon vision alone in detecting 
danger; his warning rattle may often be heard while yet he is i 
| 
entirely concealed, having been apprised of intrusion either by _ 
the sense of hearing or by mere tractile vibration. A 
In addition to the owl and the snake, there are still other 
dwellers in the burrows of the prairie dogs, but they are very 
useful little scavengers, though only beetles. Six or seven species 
of Lleodes and Asida are always found near the burrows, and one 
or two are almost peculiar to them. 
0; 
RAMBLES OF A BOTANIST IN NEW MEXICO. 
BY EDWARD ‘LEE GREENE. 
il. 
HE neighborhood of the old copper mines furnishes the best 
of ground for studying the imperfectly known and therefore 
very interesting sylva of the remote south-west. The number of 
species belonging to genera which make up forests in other 
countries is very considerable, and yet there is nothing in all this — 
region which merits the name of a forest; nothing which i 
emigrant from “the States” would call “ a piece of good timber. 
-= Of oaks, for example, there are four species, but one of which — 
attains the dimensions of a middle-sized forest tree; this is Gam- 
pbel’s oak (Quercus gambelii Nutt.), a deciduous tree with some 
thing of the habit of the Wisconsin burr oak, but having foliage 
-and acorns more like those of the common white oak. It grows 
-rather sparingly in the little valleys among the higher hills, ant 
_ is about the only oak of the region whose wood is good for an 
