GENERAL NOTES 
141 
distaste on the part of the Mexican inhabitants for manual labor between meals, 
I was puzzled to account for the wagon loads that they were daily bringing to 
market. 
I was told that eight car loads had been sent to the eastern dealers, at that 
date, and as many more were expected before the end of the season. 
Upon inquiring of the Mexicans, as well as the American merchants, I learned 
that the nuts were all secured from the store houses of the wood rat. Armed 
with an iron hook, about three feet in length, for removing the top of the nest, 
the Mexican nut hunter seeks the cactus thickets in the neighborhood of the pines. 
The nests and storehouses of the wood rat are usually placed in the shelter of the 
chollo cactus, if any are about, and thus protected are comparatively safe. The 
dome-shaped collection of sticks, dead cactus, and in fact everything movable 
within a hundred feet of the nest, is the retaining wall of a store of nuts, of from 
a quart to five gallons; the man securing in a few moments what he might pick 
up from the ground, under the pines, in a day’s work. I was told that this store 
would be renewed within a week and the same rat pay rent, perhaps as many as 
five or six times during the fall and winter. 
I think that the storehouses are always separate from the nests, and at times 
are at quite a distance from nests that are occupied. As I was unable to take 
any specimens, owing to the short time I was in this section, I am unable to say 
with certainty just what species of wood rat is found in the locality. 
— A. W. Anthony. 
MICROTUS TOWNSENDI IN THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS OF OREGON 
All the records for the Townsend vole seem to be from the lower river valleys 
of western Oregon and Washington, and, indeed, the species has seldom been 
recorded except from localities situated on or close to tidewater. During July, 
1919, I secured a series of fifteen specimens at Prospect, Rogue River Valley, 
Oregon, that are referable to this race, as well as a number of Microtus mordax, 
and one individual that seems to be Microtus richardsoni arvicoloides ; but the 
skull of the latter has disappeared and I cannot be certain. 
The middle reaches of the Rogue River flow through a dry country with summer 
temperatures that may reach 110 degrees, and I feel satisfied that this arid terri- 
tory is an effective barrier to the continuous distribution of most of the forms 
that are characteristic of the humid coast belt. Prospect is at an elevation of 
about three thousand feet, and there is a fairly strong infusion of Transition 
elements in the surrounding country, but there is a pronounced change in the 
flora of the slightly lower country a couple of miles to the westward, and I believe 
that its chief tendency is Boreal. Vulpes, Evotomys, Eutamias senex and Lepus 
washingtonii klamathensis are a few of the forms that occur here, and in the small 
patch of alsike clover that was swarming with the Microtus, I took such Canadian 
species as Zapus pacificus and Neosorex bendirei. Taking all these points into 
consideration, it seems likely that the range of Microtus townsendi is interrupted 
between the coast and the mountains. Although there are no high mountains 
in the immediate vicinity of Prospect, the region rises in a remarkably even slope 
to the lofty peaks of the Cascades, and this vole may be expected to occur in areas 
that are subject to similar climatic influences on the western slopes of the Cas- 
cades, north as far as the Columbia River gap. 
