Chapter IX: Desert Animals.--Meeting desert requirements--Peculiar

desert character--Desert Indians--Life without water--Endurance of the jack-rabbit--Prairie dogs and water--Water famine--Coyotes and wild-cats living without water--Lean, gaunt life--Fierceness of animals--Attack and escape--The wild-cat--Spring of the cat--Mountain lion--His habits--The gray wolf--Home of the wolf--The coyote--His cleverness--His subsistence--His background--The fox--The prey--Devices for escape--Senses of the rabbit--Speed of the jack-rabbit--His endurance--The “cotton-tail”--Squirrels and gophers--Desert antelope--His eyes, nose, and ears--His swiftness--The mule-deer--Deer in flight--White-tailed deer--The reptiles--Defence of poison--The fang and sting--The rattlesnake and his poison--Spiders and tarantulas--Centipedes and scorpions--Lizards and swifts--The hydrophobia skunk--The cutthroat band--The eternal struggle--Brute courage and character--Beauty in character--Graceful forms of animals--Colors of lizards--Mystery of motion 150

CHAPTER X. _Winged Life._--First day’s walk--Tracks in the sand--Scarcity of birds--Dangers of bird-life--No cover for protection--Food problem--Heat and drouth again--A bird’s temperature--Innocent-looking birds--The road-runner--Wrens and fly-catchers--Development of special characteristics--Birds of the air--The vulture--His hunting and sailing--The southern buzzard--The crow--The great condor--Eagles and hawks--Bats and owls--The burrowing owl--Ground-birds--The road-runner’s swiftness--The vicious beak--The desert-quail--Wings of the quail--Travelling for water--Habits of the quail--His strong legs--Bush-birds--Woodpeckers and cactus--Finches and mocking-birds--Humming-birds--Doves and grosbeaks--The lark and flickers--Jays and magpies--Water fowl--Beetles and worms--Fighting destruction by breed--Blue and green beetles--Butterflies--Design and character--Beauty of birds--Beauty also of reptiles--Nature’s work all purposeful--Precious jewel of the toad 174

CHAPTER XI. _Mesas and Foot-Hills._--Flat steps of the desert--Across Southern Arizona--Rising from the desert--The great mesas--“Grease wood plains”--Upland vegetation--Grass plains--Spring and summer on the plains--Home of the antelope--Beds of soda and gypsum--Riding into the unexpected--The Grand Canyon country--Hills covered with juniper--The Painted Desert--Riding on the mesas--The reversion to savagery--The thin air again--The light and its deceptions--Distorted proportions--Changed colors--The little hills--Painting the desert--Worn-down mountains--Mountain wash--Flattening down the plain--Mountain making--The foot-hills--Forms of the foot-hills--Mountain plants--Bare mountains--The southern exposures--Gray lichens--Still in the desert--Arida Zona--Cloud-bursts in the mesas--Wash of rains--Gorge cutting--In the canyons--Walls of rock--Color in canyon shadows--Blue sky--Desert landscape--Knowledge of Nature--Nature-lovers--Human limitations 194