Cahfi-—Notes on the Vertebrate Fauna 
483 
NOTES ON THE VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF HOUGHTON 
AND IRON COUNTIES, MICHIGAN. 
Alvin K. Cahn. 
During the month of August, 1914, the writer spent approxi¬ 
mately three weeks in Iron and Houghton counties, in the west¬ 
ern third of the northern peninsula of Michigan. Headquarters 
were made at two places—Kenton, a town in the southwestern 
corner of Houghton county, and a field camp on the shores of a 
lake known locally as Lake 33, lying in Iron county some fifteen 
miles from Kenton. These two stations, so very different in char¬ 
acter, yielded a variety of animals that may perhaps be consid¬ 
ered as typical of the interior of northern Michigan. 
Kenton is the site of what was once a bustling lumber camp, 
the brain, as it were, from which impulses were sent into the 
heart of the vast pine (Pinus strohus) forests, stretching away 
in every direction. The result of these impulses are today the 
feature of the landscape. As far as the eye can reach, undulat¬ 
ing hills are dotted with stubs twelve to eighteen inches high, 
thickly interspersed with the needle-like shafts of dead pine 
‘ ‘ saplings ^ ’ which were left, alive, at the time the timber cuttings 
were made, but which died probably from the excessive expos¬ 
ure. Fire and wind have also played their part in the denuda¬ 
tion of the landscape, and great tangled ‘^slashings’’ are found 
bisecting the forests. Here and there are large areas of ‘ ‘ second 
growth”, fighting for every inch of ground, every drop of 
moisture, every ray of sun-light. Some of this “second growth” 
has already reached a considerable size, but much of it is the 
growth of the last fifteen to twenty-five years. A river of rust- 
colored water, the Kenton river,—the east branch of the Ontona¬ 
gon,—flows around the edge of the town, winding alternately 
through clearings and dense woods. Animal life abounds in this 
