1924] Swarth: Birds and Mammals of the Skeena River Region 317

plateau slopes gently upward toward the several nearby mountain
ranges. The most conspicuous of these, the towering, rocky peaks of
the Rocher Déhboulé, ten or twelve miles to the southeast, rise pre-
cipitously to elevations of more than 8000 feet.

In the bottom lands poplar (Populus tremuloides) is the dominant
forest growth, covering many square miles in almost pure stands of
dense woods. Along the river there are rows of large cottonwoods,
and on the ridges thickets of hazel, the abundance of which probably
gave the town its name.

The higher slopes and plateaus, above the river bottoms, were once
thickly covered with Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmanni), but these
areas, at least toward the southeast, have suffered repeatedly from
forest fires, so that but remnants of the woods remain standing. The }
ground beneath is strewn with charred trunks, hidden during the
summer months by fire weed and bracken; and partly burned trees
remain erect at scattered intervals. The plateau region is drained by
numerous small streams, bordered with thickets of willow and alder.

At rather frequent intervals there are muskegs, usually unaffected
by fire, and affording contrast in several respects to their more
monotonous surroundings.

These muskegs, often roughly circular in shape, are of varying
size, marshy, with deep, sticky mud, or sometimes a few inches of
water, and with mud and water usually concealed by grass. Scattered
over them are a few funereal black spruces (Picea mariana), festooned
with streamers of black moss. The bordering forest of Engelmann
spruce usually forms a ring of denser growth than elsewhere about
the margin of the muskeg, where, with the spruce, are mingled a few
red cedars (Thuja plicata).

Toward the base of Rocher Déboulé, there are places where red
cedar grows in some abundance. Mostly these trees had been cut out
years before, but some groves remain, and in these clumps of cedars
and in the muskegs species of birds are breeding that are not seen

elsewhere at the same altitude.

Our camp in this region was on the opposite side of the Bulkley
River from Hazelton, on what is locally known as Mission Point.
Mammal trapping was carried on in the bottom lands between the
Bulkley River and the railroad.