40 
Annual Reports of Academy of 
in that indescribable way which Arizona holds as her own. A 
forty-four mile railroad, which uses a motor bus on the rails for 
passengers, extends south from Gila (pronounced “Hee-la”) to 
Ajo (“Ah'-ho”), a large and modern copper-mining community. 
The conspicuous vegetation of the country traversed is typical of 
southwestern Arizona, including such species as palo verde, palo 
fierro, cat claw, mesquite, sahuaro and cholla, excepting the first 
all decidedly spined or hooked and so to be respected. To the 
southeast Gunsight Mountain and Montezuma's Head in the Big 
Ajo Range came into view, while Crater Mountain was passed on 
the right. Far off to the west, among the multitude of other peaks 
and ridges, Castle Dome, about eighty miles away, was clearly 
evident. 
The town of Ajo is in the Little Ajo Mountains, and work in 
these and in the grassy Ajo Valley, about six miles away, was 
wonderfully productive for us. The vegetation of these moun¬ 
tains is nearly an optimum development of the Arizona desert 
flora, particularly in the arborescent forms. The great pitahaya or 
candelabra cactus (Cereus thurberi) here reaches its northern limit. 
One of our particularly desirable finds was a fair series of both 
sexes of a genus and species of grasshopper known before from the 
United States by only a single damaged specimen. 
A trip was made from Ajo to Quitobaquita, a little Papago Indian 
community, directly on the Mexican line and nearly forty miles 
south of Ajo. Our route took us through the Growler Range and 
down Growler Valley to the Quitobaquita Hills, the elevations all 
with the really fine desert vegetation seen about Ajo. Much rain 
had blessed this portion of Arizona, and the washes had waist- 
high patches of vividly green galleta grass. Quitobaquita has a 
good spring, several houses and a few inhabitants, and it is one of 
the little communities along the Rio Sonoyta, a desert river of 
precarious existence on the Mexican side of the line. The town 
has an unenviable reputation for heat, which was fully maintained 
the day we were there. 
From Ajo we moved several hundred miles to Nogales, Arizona, 
about seventy miles south of Tucson. Nogales was our center for 
some days, and from it we examined the Pajaritos Mountains to 
the west, the Patagonia Mountains to the east, and some rolling 
country and the bottom lands of the Santa Cruz River to the north. 
