36 
THE CONDOR 
I VOL. V 
Zenaidura macronra 
Catharies anra 
Buteo borealis calurus 
Aqaila chrysaelos 
Falco mexicaiiiis 
Falco peregrinus ayiatuni 
Falco sparverius deserticoliis 
Bubo virginianus pallescens 
Geococcyx californianus 
Dryobates villosus (subspec?) 
Phalcenoptilus nuttalli 
Chordeiles virginianus hefiryi 
Aeronautes melanoleuctis 
Trochilus alexandri 
Selasphorus rufus 
Tyr annus verticalis 
Mviarchus cinerascens ' • 
Savor nis say a 
Aphelocoma woodhousei 
Corvus corax sinuatus 
Cyanocepltalus cyatiocephalus 
Icterus bullocki 
Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis 
Chondestes grammacus strigatus 
Spizella socialis arizonce 
Ampliispiza bilineata deserticola 
Petrochelidon hinifrons 
Tachycineta thalassina 
Stelgidopteryx serripennis 
Lanius ludoviciaiius excubitorides 
Vireo vici?iior 
Mini us polyglottos leucopterus 
Toxo stoma bendirei 
Salpinctes obsoletus 
Catherpes mexicanus conspersus 
Parus inornatus ridgivayi 
Psaltriparus plumbeus 
Polioptila plumbea 
Sialia arctica 
Feathers Beside the Styx. 
BY KDGAR A. MEARNS. 
S trangers to the Yellowstone National Park are apt to regard the truest 
statements respecting its wonders as nothing short of startling. Possibly 
their confirmation may cause the pendulum of credulity to swing too far in 
the opposite direction. Certain it is that some of the tales of the Park to which 
credence is generally attached require scientific corroboration, and none more so 
than those which relate to supposed death pens in which animals, large and small, 
perish in numbers. 
When traveling with my wife through the Yellowstone region, fourteen years 
ago, vague accounts reached us of hollows and places filled with deadly gases into 
which all creatures passing must leave hope and life behind. These whisperings, 
later, culminated in the story of the tragic death of “Wahb,” the grizzly, from the 
facile pen of Ernest Thompson Seton. On returning to the Park, in April, 1902, I 
learned that to doubt the existence of a valley or canyon of death, bestrewn with 
the decaying carcasses of bears and other beasts, somewhere in that region, was to 
display hopeless ignorance of fact. Men of high position and undoubted veracity 
had testified, as eye-witnesses, to these things; but Captain Hiram M. Chittenden, 
PJ. S. A., an engineer officer charged with carrying on extensive improvements 
now in progress in the Yellowstone National Park, tells me that, notwithstanding 
his great familiarity with the topography of the Park, no such place is known to 
him. When such an alleged locality was reached the huge dead beasts had van- 
ished, and no more than a fragment of bone such as might be found anywhere in 
the region was visible. 
Though we were unable to .set foot on the bank of a veritable River Styx, any 
