the sparseness of
desert growth, but simply that each plant requires more room. So much
earth must be preempted to extract so much moisture. The real struggle
for existence, the real brain of the plant, is underground; above there
is room for a rounded perfect growth. In Death Valley, reputed the very
core of desolation, are nearly two hundred identified species.

Above the lower tree-line, which is also the snow-line, mapped out
abruptly by the sun, one finds spreading growth of pinon, juniper,
branched nearly to the ground, lilac and sage, and scattering white
pines.

There is no special preponderance of self-fertilized or wind-fertilized
plants, but everywhere the demand for and evidence of insect life. Now
where there are seeds and insects there will be birds and small mammals,
and where these are, will come the slinking, sharp-toothed kind that
prey on them. Go as far as you dare in the heart of a lonely land, you
cannot go so far that life and death are not before you. Painted lizards
slip in and out of rock crevices, and pant on the white hot sands.
Birds, hummingbirds even, nest in the cactus scrub; woodpeckers befriend
the demoniac yuccas; out of the stark, treeless waste rings the music of
the night-singing mockingbird. If it be summer and the sun well down,
there will be a burrowing owl to call. Strange, furry, tricksy things
dart across the open places, or sit motionless in the conning towers of
the creosote.

The poet may have "named all the birds without a gun," but not the
fairy-footed, ground-inhabiting, furtive, small folk of the rainless
regions. They are too many and too swift; how many you would not believe
without seeing the footprint tracings in the sand. They are nearly all
night workers, finding the days too hot and white. In mid-desert where
there are no cattle, there are no birds of carrion, but if you go far in
that direction the chances are that you will find yourself shadowed by
their tilted wings. Nothing so large as a man can move unspied upon in
that country, and they know well how the land deals with strangers.
There are hints to be had here of the way in which a land forces new
habits on its dwellers. The quick increase of suns at the end of spring
sometimes overtakes birds in their nesting and effects a reversal of the
ordinary manner of incubation. It becomes necessary to keep eggs cool
rather than warm. One hot, stifling spring in the Little Antelope I had
occasion to pass and rep