20 
Annual Reports of Academy of 
River, at an elevation of about 7000 feet. To the west the Saguache 
Range towers, here forming the Continental Divide, with Mt. 
Princeton dominating the landscape to the northwest, while the 
east side of the valley is flanked by the Park Range. From Salida 
as a base studies were made and collections secured at points on 
the east side of the Divide to the summit of Monarch Pass, at 1 1200 
feet, and for a distance down on the western side of the range. 
From the juniper and pinon clad foothills about Salida one passed 
upwards through forests of pine, gloomy stretches of spruce and 
fir, with many patches of paler green of the aspen thickets, 
while at the summit of the Pass the prostrate timber-line pines 
struggled for a few hundred feet higher on sheltered slopes and then 
gave up the struggle, leaving the ridges of decomposed granite 
bare and wind swept. The view to the west from the Pass is 
tremendous in its scope, and most of the higher mountain peaks 
of southwestern Colorado can be seen, although some are far 
distant. To the south towered Mt. Ouray, and to the east sharply 
cut Mt. Shavano dominated the landscape. At the summit we 
found one of the great desiderata of the trip, a species of grass- 
hopper which had not been secured since the time of its description, 
nearly fifty years ago. Flere it was in numbers, and it is now pos- 
sible to study the insect from properly prepared material, in- 
stead of shrivelled alcoholic-preserved specimens. 
From Salida we crossed the Divide by the famous narrow-gauge 
railroad over Marshall Pass, at 10856 feet, and then down the 
valley of the Gunnison River to the town of Gunnison. Gunnison 
is virtually surrounded by mountains, many with visible patches of 
snow at the end of August. The West Elk Range to the northwest 
and the Cochetopa Hills to the south are particularly impressive 
mountain masses. Gunnison is rather high, about 8000 feet ele- 
vation, and as one follows down the river he enters the remarkable 
Rlack Canyon of the Gunnison, which, on account of the lack of 
space for a roadbed, the railroad must leave, by way of a side 
canyon climb up and over a divide, then run down into the valley 
of the Uncompahgre. Here with Montrose as a center we examined 
conditions ranging from the irrigated land of the bottoms to juniper 
and pinon covered hillsides. The driving of the Gunnison Tunnel, 
a masterly project of the United States Reclamation Service, has 
turned the vicinity of Montrose into a thriving agricultural com- 
