son's flapjacks, and we learned that, representing the owner of the region, his duties were to permit only those to cut wood or mine ice who paid for the privilege. The men who had passed our trail, it appeared, were on their way to the ice deposits near the head of the Jamapa barranca. This cutting of ice near the summit of Orizaba to take to the hot

lands at its base is a primitive industry which appeals to one as an eminently practical demonstration of the effects of altitude on climate, and to see it practiced we followed the trail of the cheerful little men from the tropics

Crossing rock-slides where pikas would have been at home, we passed timberline, which on the northern slope of the barranca was at 13,000 feet, but on the southern slope appeared to be at least Soo feet higher. The short-leaved pine was the only tree occurring here, and to the last it stood erect, was symmetrical, and attained a height of about 30 or 40 feet, or about one-half its maximum size.

Photo by Frank M. Chapman

A CITY'S ICE SUPPLY

Where the barranca narrowed until it seemed a mere crack in the mountain we found a burro staked, and a short distance farther heard voices and the musical sound of cutting ice. We had traced to its source the original "nieve" which a thousand times itinerant peddlers had nasally invited us to "tome" (take) in the streets of Cordoba. Cordoba, it is true, is now supplied with artificial "nieve," but Huatusco and other towns to the north not reached by rail still draw on the deposits of Orizaba.

The men were working at an isolated pocket of clear, crystal ice about 100 feet above us. With serapes thrown over their heads for protection from the rays of the sun, and apparently not affected by the altitude, which made us avoid unnecessary exertion, they vigorously chopped out blocks weighing about 75 pounds. With the aid of a lariat these were carefully lowered down the steep

decline to the floor of the barranca, there to be wrapped in saccate grass and old

serapes.

Late that afternoon these men trotted past our camp, now at 10,000 feet, on their way to the tropics. Each one carried a great cake of ice on his back, and the burro had two. Mentally we followed them in their journey, and the experience was properly rounded when several days later the first sound that greeted us as we stepped off the train at Cordoba was the familiar "tome nieve" of the icecream vender.

The dueno de la montaña assured us that El Pico had never been ascended from this side, thereby quickly extinguishing whatever ambition we may have

had to climb to the summit. Our task indeed was finished when we reached the upper limit of life, and with the collections made below we now had specimens of birds, trees, and plants, paintings, photographs, and data with which to construct our proposed Habitat Group of Mt. Orizaba as seen from the Tropical Zone at its base.

In due time this group was completed. and it stands, let us hope, for all time as a not inadequate representation of a mountain which, whether seen from the sea as a sun-kissed cloud, from the lowlands as a sky-piercing cone, or from the pine forests as a massive, glittering dome. always compels the homage we render a great personality.