Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 
29 
light of the setting sun long after the valley about us had turned 
steel-blue with the shadows of twilight. 
I he mountains of the Great Basin are quite different in character 
irom those of the Rockies system, in topography and geological 
history, being generally tilted fault blocks with virtually no foot¬ 
hills, the valleys between in many sections old lake basins, arms of 
the great Pleistocene lakes Bonneville and Lahontan, the shrunken 
present-day remnants of which are Great Salt, Utah, Pyramid, 
Winnemucca and Malheur Lakes, Carson Sink, and a number of 
other spectral, yet often strikingly beautiful, desert bodies of 
water. The plant and animal life of the higher life zones found on 
these Basin ranges shows marked differences from similar zones in 
the Rockies and the Sierras, as for instance the complete absence 
of great forests of fir in the Canadian zone, a regular feature in the 
other regions. The desire to secure information on the Orthoptera 
of these higher levels was the incentive urging us to examine these 
elevations in the Ruby Range. 
Our base in Clover Valley was at six thousand feet and we worked 
upward through sage, and then across broad areas of chaparral 
and equally bad aspen thickets. At ninety-five hundred feet, as 
far as horses could go, we reached snow banks,—extensive areas 
hundreds of feet long, filling entire small valley bottoms and sending 
streams of ice-cold water to the thirsty valley below. Timber 
extended but little above the ten thousand foot point, where many 
alpine flowers were in bloom, the purple lupine being everywhere. 
Marmots whistled all about us, the alpine chipmunks nearly twisted 
off their tails in gyrations born of sheer curiosity, and at ten 
thousand eight hundred feet, two splendid Golden Eagles were 
seen. Storms hung all about us, and one drenched us thoroughly 
before we reached Clover Valley. 
From Wells we travelled by rail to Westwood, passing alongside 
of the intensely blue waters of Pyramid Lake, on which, like bunches 
of cotton, the sedate White Pelicans rode the swells, or flew close 
to the water in that indescribably ponderous, yet wonderfully 
controlled flight common to all their kind. Dusty flats stretch 
from Pyramid Lake to the shallow waters of Honey Lake, from 
which our train followed up the course of the Susan River, on the 
trail of the early pioneers, through historic Susanville, then up and 
up into the magnificent Sierran forest of yellow and sugar pine, 
incense cedar and firs of several species. 
