THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXXVII. 



among the short grass which covered the open spaces of the 

 valley. The next day's journey took us over grassy slopes 

 dotted with bunches of mountain daisies ; growing solitary or 

 rarely in groups of two or three the yellow Mariposa lily (Calo- 

 chortus gumiisoni pcrpukhcr, Ckll.) opened wide its petals 

 showing the purple and yellow center. Small dark bees indus- 

 triously gathered nectar and pollen from these flowers. It was 

 interesting to see the quick motions with which they pushed 

 the hairs from the glands and sucked the nectar or climbed the 

 filaments and loaded themselves with white pollen from the 

 bursting anthers. The store house was so easily accessible and 

 the stores so abundant that often the small bee overloaded itself 

 and sank into the grass; then there was great buzzing and 

 scrambling and throwing overboard of a part of the load before 

 it could safely take to wing again. Here and there we saw the 

 purple columbine {Aquilcgia cwniUa) with great splendid flowers 

 of purple and white, though the plants were dwarfed like the 

 plants of all high mountains. 



Our second camp was made on the Pecos River, which in this 



is bordered with spruce with here and there an open grassy 



food for our horses. At the roots of this grass we found several 



This grass was full of grass-hoppers, many of the species 

 having no wings. Several large Megachile bees (M. sapc Horn's) 

 were busy on the flowers here and Argynnis eurynome and A. 

 electa flew from flower to flower. It was curious to see these 

 butterflies going from glade to glade, for they would often rest 

 in the boughs of the spruce trees, usually on the bright silver 



and the sun would glisten on the silver spotted wings ! 



square. A beautiful species of Actaa grew here but though 



