On 1 August, guided by an obliging German Jew and accompanied by several residents of the locality, including a storekeeper from the Mannheim region, we undertook a hunting excursion to the so-called Rocky Valley, where there is said to be a noteworthy deposit of bare rocky debris. For about a half hour, we walked upward over meadows and between fences where the Alauda magna is not uncommon. It usually sits on the ground in the meadow, flies up when the hunter is quite far away, and does not tolerate him at close range. Then it flies up, shows its white tail feathers, and alights on a pole or an isolated branch or on the tips of shrubs. I would have shot several of them if a wild, untrained bird dog of one of my companions had not immediately flushed all the birds. We finally drove the dog back with blows and stones and then passed isolated farmsteads in the forests, all of whose inhabitants are of German origin and speak a rather poor German. Here we found the redheaded woodpecker (P. erythrocephalus) and the goldenwinged (P. auratus) but bagged only the former. We also shot a bluebird (Sylvia sialis), as well as a chipmunk, or fence mouse, sitting on the forest fences. I shot a cute specimen of this species, which had its cheeks stuffed full of the finest kernels of wheat, which it was collecting for its winter provisions. After we had several times flushed out a large snipe (Scolopax minor Gm.?) without killing it in a sparse forest of oaks, Juglans, Castanea, sassafras, Cornus florida, Platanus, and Liriodendron mixed with some swampy spots and swamp grass, we followed the path past several isolated dwellings of farmers of German extraction and occasionally saw very wretched log huts there. There were children there in large number in shabby clothing; they seemed to be the only wealth these people had. It was raining and the sky was overcast, but it was very warm nevertheless and we drank at a cool draw well.

From here on, the sparse forest, devoid of all undergrowth, was filled more and more with large pieces of hornblende and quartz rock. The blocks lay strewn about everywhere, and some were very large and heavily overgrown with lichens.[Page 1:53] At the house of a farmer, we inquired about the rugged path to Rocky Valley, which everywhere leads through wild forest filled with rock fragments.M26Pursh vol. II, p. 372. Cimicifuga serpentaria.Actaea spicata racemosa Wild., with its long spikes of flowers similar to veronica, grew four to five feet tall everywhere, just as Digitalis purpurea does in the wooded regions of the Rhenish hills. Here and there, where the understory was completely lacking in the forest, stout, rectangular wooden fences had been built around individual sprouts as proof of how much forest management has flourished here.M27

Individual cattle graze everywhere throughout these forests, and in this way people try to protect the young sprouts. The farmer, at whose house we inquired regarding the path, guided us part of the way and described the path for us, which we found.

Finally we again entered younger dense forest and found a small brook, now dry, with a great many rock fragments; we followed it a short distance upstream and then reached the place called Rocky Valley. Here through the thickets, one has a view of a ravine up along the bed of the brook, where there is an enormous amount of rocky rubble consisting of hornblende and quartz, pushed one on top of the other, so that a space about 150 to 200 paces wide, but more extensive farther up, appears, which is covered only by such stones. There is not a shrub or blade of grass to be seen here. In Germany we frequently have similar areas in basalt regions; for example, at Beilstein near Greifenstein and in other places. Because of the steady, gently falling rain, the stones were very slippery, and one can easily dislocate or sprain an ankle while crossing over them. No living things appeared in this region at all, not even plants, in the immediate vicinity. The rubble here looked as though it had been piled up by a flood, and in the less hot months of the year, one is said to be able to hear water rippling under the rocks.

From there we returned to the home of the farmer who had shown us the path, and for refreshment [we] had some spirits and water. Some of the people here, all of whom speak German, worked in the shade of the trees, cutting shingles. My double- barreled shotgun with percussion locks and safety astonished them not a little. The return trip home, on which we bagged nothing worthy of note, was completed by one or two o’clock. Foxes and the big gray squirrel (Sciurus cinereus) are found near Rocky Valley, but we did not see any.

At home I found Dr. Saynisch from Bethlehem, who had lunch with us and provided me with much interesting information about natural history. In the afternoon he immediately went hunting with Mr. Bodmer, and they returned with a few birds, a chipmunk, some nice turtles (Emys scabra Say), and some freshwater mussels (Unio? [——]). The latter are found in small and moderately large rivers here in the forests. The evening became quite pleasant and cool. We took up our positions along the path before our town where common nighthawks (Caprimulgus americanus) were flying about, one of which Dreidoppel shot. They often fly very high, then come down close to the earth, and their humming sound is often heard. We found the gullet of the bird that was shot filled with very many small insects, especially beetles, which form a dense ball there before the bird swallows them. Like most American species of this genus, this common nighthawk has a white stripe on its flight feathers.