Sierra Club Bulletin. 



of twig from a prickly gooseberry bush, about the only 

 sort of timber here, and well covered with thorns. Such 

 a domicile might afford shelter, but, like the Irishman's 

 underdone pork, one would expect that he would "feel 

 it doing him good all night long." A marmot, too, had 

 made this his residence, burrowing well beyond possible 

 molestation, though he would have few enemies at this 

 altitude, but possibly if proper precaution were neglected 

 some sort of telepathy would apprise an ever-vigilant 

 wildcat or coyote of the fact. Nature, like Nelson's 

 England, "expects every man to do his duty."* Though 

 somewhat remote from the busy haunts of mice and men, 

 this had been rather a center of mammalian activities. 

 Generations of little creatures had made this great hall 

 their forum. An alpine saxifrage grew close by, and 

 the gooseberry bushes on which the mild-eyed wood- 

 rat had made requisition. These were in flower, and 

 had a pleasant aromatic scent, promise of fruit to come. 

 The rain soon letting up, we started off under the ledge 

 and twice crossed the snow, beyond this finding a hand- 

 some lavender-colored eriogonum, a representative of 

 the buckwheat family. Here was a hoard of leaves of 

 the lungwort and dodekatheon, all quite fresh and gath- 

 ered since night. 



These I fancy the mountain rat had brought in after 

 daylight for his refreshment durmg the day. A little 

 huckleberry bush throve near by, a pigmy of his race, 

 only an inch high, with pink flowers, trying to fill the 

 place of his more stalwart relatives. One is reminded of 

 the remark made by Oliver Wendell Holmes, small in 

 stature but of robust wit, when, at a committee meeting, 

 he was asked if he would "fill the shoes" of the gigantic 

 Phillips Brooks, who was absent. His comment in ac- 

 cepting the position was that he would try to do as 



* Since writing the above, Professor Lawson has told me that on a recent 

 visit to Mexico he ascended Popocatepetl, 17,550 feet, and that he found, 

 directly on top, in the new-fallen snow, a fresh coyote's tracks, made the 

 morning of his ascent, an interesting evidence of that animal's curiosity, 

 enterprise, and endurance. 



