No. 627] SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION 



469 



prise to find there a thriving colony of English sparrows. These 

 were established on the Greenland Kaneh (otherwise known as 

 Furnace Creek Ranch), elevation 178 feet helow sea level. 

 Specimens were collected, both as alcoholics and .as dry study 

 skins, but not to an extent to threaten the persistence of the 

 colony. For here, it occurred to the writer, we had at hand a 

 particularly convincing "experiment" already under way, of 

 just the sort called for by certain critics of the work of the sys- 

 tematist and distributionist, which in time would test the ques- 

 tion of the evanescence versus the relative permanence of char- 

 acters of the category commonly viewed as subspecific. 



The sparrows of Furnace Creek Ranch, which were estimated 

 to number about fifty, had their main headquarters in the tops 

 of the several tall Washington Palms which overshadow the 

 ranch house ; also several nests were seen in the Fremont cotton- 

 woods which line the irrigation ditches along the alfalfa fields 

 for a quarter of a mile down toward the glistening borax flats. 

 The traveller on entering Death Valley is impressed by Green- 

 land Ranch as a wonderfully rich oasis surrounded by a desert 

 of surpassing barrenness. The English sparrow colony there is, 

 then, isolated under a climate that is probably of the greatest ex- 

 treme in the direction of high temperature combined with low 

 relative humidity, of any place in North America. 



Greenland Ranch is owned by the Pacific Coast Borax Com- 

 pany, who value it for its output of alfalfa hay and for certain 

 appurtenant water rights, there being a constant flow of forty 

 inches from the warm springs nearby. Fortunately for our 

 present problem, the company has for years required its mana- 

 gei*s to keep a daily record of weather conditions. There is a 

 standard instrument shelter, and the records are kept in avail- 

 able form, and furthermore have been transmitted regularly to 

 the United States Weather Bureau. Without going into details 

 here, it is of interest to note that the highest recorded tempera- 

 ture for any place in the United States was observed there on 

 July 10, 1913, when an afternoon temperature of 134° Fahren- 

 heit in the shade was reached.. 



As to the time of appearance of the sparrows in Death Valley 

 I have good reason to rely on the statements of Mr. Oscar Den- 

 ton, who is the present maiiiiirrr of tlie (irooiiland Ranch. He 

 says that he firat saw theiu m tlie I'lnn'i! yard five years ago 

 (1914). That was about Ww tlnw \ho D.-atli Valley spur of the 

 Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad was run to the present location 



