matted tangle of stems and branches almost impossible to get through.
This chaparral, as the Spanish called it, clothes the foot-hills and
mountain sides with a close growth through which deer and bears alone
can travel and make trails or runways. Great stretches of buckthorn in
the north, and of sage-brush in the south, cover the wild lands, while
in the sandy desert tall, prickly cactus, yucca, and mesquite grow
with the sage-brush in the blazing sun.
Only a few of California's wild plants and flowers have been now
called to your notice. But children have sharp eyes, and you will
find many more to inquire about in your vacation days. Then
the blackberries and thimble-berries will be ripe, and the pink
salmon-berry in the redwoods. Perhaps you will look for and dig up the
soaproot, that onion-like bulb of one of the lily family with which
the Indians make a soapy lather to wash their clothes. Let us hope
you will know and keep away from the "poison-oak," the low bush with
pretty red leaves, for its leaves are apt to make your skin swell up
and blister wherever they touch you.
What a long and pleasant story might be told you of our state's real
gardens! Perhaps your teacher will give you an hour to talk about your
home gardens, and to see how much you can tell about them. You may
have flowers the year round, if you live on the coast, or in the warm
valleys where no Jack Frost comes with his icy breath to kill the
tender plants. In such genial climates roses and geraniums bloom all
year, and only rest when the gardener cuts them back; and most of the
shrubs and trees in parks and gardens are always fresh and green.
Florists who raise flowers to sell find that here they can grow the
choicest and finest carnations, roses, and all the garden blossoms you
know so well. Many of these florists deal only in flower-seeds, and
bulbs or roots of the lilies to send to the Eastern states or abroad,
where people greatly prize California flowers.
Plants and trees from all parts of the world thrive here, also. You
have seen the palms, the tall sword-palm with its great spike of snowy
bloom in the spring, the fan-palm whose dried and trimmed leaves
are really used for fans, and, perhaps, the date-palm. This tree
was planted round the Missions by the Padres, and some, more than
a hundred years old, are still standing at the San Gabriel Mission.
These, and the magnolia with its large creamy blossoms, as well as the
graceful pepper-tree, are natives of warm, southern lands, while the
eucalyptus, or gum-tree, was brought here from Australia.
Look round, children, as you walk to and from school, or in the park,
and try to know and name the green things growing there, the flowers
and plants sent to make our world a pleasant place to live in.
THE BIG TREES AND LUMBERING
The largest trees in the world are those forest giants of California
which grow on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, and nowhere
else on the globe. People carelessly call these grand trees "redwoods"
or "big trees," but their family name is Sequoia, an Indian chief's
name. When the trees were first discovered, in 1853, accounts of their
height and size were sent to England. Supposing this giant to be a new
tree, it was there christened _Wellingtonia_, and also _gigantea_
for its immense measurements. While Americans were trying to have it
called _Washingtonia_, a famous Frenchman who knew all about trees
decided that the specimen sent him was certainly a sequoia, as named
by a German professor some six years before this time. So the tree was
called _sequoia gigantea_ and quietly went on growing, unmindful of
the four nations who had quarrelled over its christening. Why, indeed,
should it bother its lofty head with the chatter of people whose
countries were unknown when this mighty tree was full grown? For
these sequoias are the oldest of living objects and have probably been
growing for four thousand years. How do we know this? Well, when a
fallen trunk is sawed across, one can see rings in the wood, and it is
thought that each ring is a year's growth. John Muir counted over four
thousand of these annual rings on the stump of one of the Kings River
trees.
These fine old trees grow in groves, and of the nine or ten groves
the Calaveras and Mariposa are the best known. The Calaveras group of
nearly a hundred mighty trees was the first one discovered, and four
trees here are over three hundred feet high. The fallen "Father of
the Forest" must have been much higher, for it measures a hundred feet
round its trunk at the root end. A man can ride on horseback for two
hundred feet through its hollow trunk as it lies on the ground. Many
of the standing trees hollowed out by fires are large enough, used as
cabins, to live in.
The Mariposa grove of Big Trees, being not far from Yosemite Valley,
is the best known, as thousands of tourists visit both places. There
is a big tree at Mariposa for every day in the year, and two very
wonderful ones, the Grizzly Giant and Wawona. Stage-coaches drive into
the grove through the tree Wawona, which was bored and burned out
so as to make an opening ten by twelve feet. A wall of wood ten feet
thick on each side of this opening supports the living tree. The great
Grizzly Giant towers a hundred feet without a branch, and twice that
height above the first immense branches that are six feet through.
This was, no doubt, an old tree when Columbus discovered America, yet
it is alive and green and still growing.
The largest tree in the world is the General Sherman, in Sequoia
National Park, and it is thirty-five feet in diameter. This means that
the stump of the tree, if smoothed off, would make a floor on which
thirty people might dance, or your whole class be seated. You can
scarcely imagine what a mighty column such a tree is, with its rich
red-brown bark, fluted like a column, too, and with its crown of
feathery green branches and foliage. The bark is a foot or two thick.
The trees are evergreens, and conifers, or cone-bearers. Sequoia cones
are two or three inches long and full of small seeds. The Douglas
squirrel gets most of these seeds, but there are still seedlings and
saplings or young trees enough to keep the race alive in most of the
groves.
These groves of wonderful and rare trees are protected as National
Parks in the Sequoia and Grant groves, and Mariposa belongs to the
state. It is against the law to cut the trees in those groves. Their
worst enemy is fire, and a troop of cavalry is sent every year to
guard them, and to keep out the sheep-herders, whose flocks would
destroy the underbrush and young trees. But, unfortunately, lumbermen
have put up mills near the Fresno and Kings River groups, and, wasting
more than they use, are destroying magnificent trees thousands of
years old in order to make shingles. When nature has taken such good
care of this rare and wonderful tree, the Sierra Giant, men should try
to preserve the groves unharmed in all their beauty.
Another _sequoia_ grows in great forests along the Coast Range from
Santa Cruz to the northern state-line, and beyond into Oregon. This
is the _sequoia sempervirens_, the Latin name meaning always green.
Redwood is its common name, and the lumber for our frame or wooden
houses is cut from this tree. Millions of feet of this redwood lumber
are shipped from the northern counties of the state every year, up
to Alaska or down to Central and South America. It is also sent far
across the Pacific to the Hawaiian and Philippine islands and to China
and Australia.
While the _sequoia gigantea_ delights in a clear sky and hot sunshine,
its brother, the _sempervirens_, prefers a cool sea-coast climate,
offering frequent baths of fog. There is also a difference in the size
of these trees; the redwood is often three hundred feet high, but
is less in girth than its relative in the Sierras. There is not much
underbrush and little sunshine in the cool, green redwood forests,
each tree rising tall and stately for a hundred feet without branches,
while the green tops seem almost to touch the sky as one looks up.
Through the woods one hears the blue jay scream and chatter, and the
tap, tap of the woodpecker as he drills holes in the bark to fill with
acorns for his winter store.
When the lumberman looks at these beautiful forests, he sees only many
logs containing many thousand feet of lumber, which he must get out
the easiest and cheapest way. He only chooses the finest and largest
trunks, and there is great waste in cutting these. The men begin
to saw the tree some eight or ten feet from the ground, and soon it
trembles and falls with a mighty crash, often snapping off other trees
in its way to the ground. After all the selected trees have fallen,
fires are started to burn off the branches and underbrush so that the
men can work easier. This fire only chars the outside bark of the big,
green logs, but it kills all the young saplings, and leaves the once
beautiful forest a waste of blackened logs and gray ashes. When the
fire burns itself out, the logs are usually sawed with a cross-cut saw
into sixteen-foot lengths, since in that form they are easy to handle.
Then oxen or horses haul them out; or sometimes a wire cable is
fastened to them by iron "dogs," or stakes, and a little stationary
engine pulls them away to the siding at the railroad track. Here they
are rolled on flat-cars, fastened with a big iron chain around the
four or six logs on the car, and taken on the logging train to the
mill-pond. They lie soaking in the water until drawn up to the keen
saws of the sawmill that cut and slice the wood like cheese. The bark
and outside is carved off as you would cut the crust off bread, and
then sharp, circular saws cut boards and planks till the log is used
up, and the log-carriage lifts another to its place. As the shining
steel bites into the wood the noise almost deafens you and the mill
shakes with the thunder of log-carriage and feeders. Useless ends,
slabs, and refuse are burnt in the sawdust pit, where the fires never
go out. Very much of the tree is wasted and all the limbs. The redwood
tree has so much life and strength, however, that it sends up bright
green sprouts around the burnt stump, and standing trees charred
outside to the tops will have new branches the next season. In the
older forests tall young trees are often seen growing in a ring round
an empty spot, the long-dead stump having rotted away.
[Illustration: BIG TREES AT FELTON, SANTA CRUZ CO.]
Near Santa Cruz is a grove of large and beautiful redwoods, many
of the trees being over three hundred feet high and from forty
to sixty-five feet around the base of the trunk. The Giant is the
largest, and three other immense ones are named for Generals Grant,
Sherman, and Fremont. In 1846 General Fremont found this grove, and
camped, on a rainy winter night, in the hollow trunk of the tree
bearing his name. Here is also seen a group of eleven very tall trees
growing in a circle around an old stump.
In the Sierras, both in the _sequoia_ groves and forests above the
Big-Tree region, are very large sugar-pines, red firs, and yellow-pine
trees, all of which make excellent lumber. Great forests of these
trees, with cedars almost as large as the redwoods, are in the
northern counties also. You may have seen sugar-pine cones which are
over a foot long, the largest of all found, while redwood cones are
the smallest. Another great tree is the Douglas spruce, the king of
spruce trees, growing in both Sierra Nevada and Coast ranges.
The California laurel, or bay tree, with its beautiful, shining green
leaves, and the madroño, the slender, red-barked tree on the hillsides
you must have noticed in your trips to the country, as well as our
fine valley and mountain oaks. Try to learn the kinds of trees and
study their leaves, blossoms, and fruit, and you will find every one
a friend well worth knowing. Then you will wish to save them from fire
and the lumberman's axe, especially the rare and old _sequoias_.
OUR BIRDS
More than three hundred kinds of these dear feathered friends and
visitors live in California. Along the sea-shore, in the great valleys
and the mountain-forests and meadows, even in the dry, hot desert, the
birds, our shy and merry neighbors, are at home. In many parts of
the state they find sunshine and green trees the year round, and food
always at hand. Yet sparrows, robins, and woodpeckers will stay in the
snowed-in groves of the Sierras all winter, contentedly chirping or
singing in spite of the bitter cold.
If you know these wanderers of wood and field, these birds of sea and
shore, and their interesting habits, you will wish to protect them
from stone or gun, and their nests from the egg collector. You will
listen to the lark and linnet, and be glad that the happy songster
trilling such sweet notes is free to fly where he wishes, and is
not pining in a cage. And you, little girl, will not encourage the
destruction of these pretty creatures by wearing a sea-gull or part of
some dead bird on your hat.
To become better acquainted with birds, let us call them before us by
classes, beginning with our sea-birds and those round the bays and on
the coast. Some of these not only swim but dive in the salt waters,
and to this class of divers belong the grebe, loon, murre, and puffin.
They dive at the flash of a gun, and after what seems a long time,
come up far away from the spot the hunter aimed at. These birds
usually nest on bare, rocky cliffs near the ocean, or on islands like
the Farallones, and their large green eggs hatch out nestlings that
are ugly and awkward and helpless on land. But they ride the great
ocean-breakers, or dive into their clear depths easily and gracefully;
and as they live upon fish or small sea-creatures, the divers only
seek land to roost at night and to raise their young.
Next come the gulls, who belong to a class known as "long-winged
swimmers." They have strong wings and fly great distances, and with
their webbed feet swim well, too. Most of the sea-gulls are white with
a gray coat on their backs, but they look snowy-white as they fly. You
may see them walking about the wharves, or perching on roofs and piles
watching for food, and seeming very tame as they pick up bits of bread
or the refuse floating in the water. They follow steamers for miles,
scarcely moving their wings as they float in the air; and if you throw
a cracker from the deck, some gull will make a swift swoop and snatch
it before the cracker reaches the water.
Far out on the Pacific the albatross sails proudly on his broad wings,
and cares nothing for high winds or storms. He rests and sleeps on the
billows at night with his little companions, the stormy petrels. He is
the largest and strongest of our birds of flight, the very king of the
sea. The stormy petrels are not much larger than a swallow. Sailors
call them. "Mother Carey's chickens," and are sure a storm is
coming up when petrels follow the ship. The albatross, petrel, and
a gull-like bird called a shearwater belong to the "tube-nosed
swimmers," on account of their curious long beaks.
Along the coast, and wading in the shallow waters around the bays, are
some strange birds known as pelicans and shags. They are good fishers,
and drive the darting, finny fellows before them as they wade in the
water till they can see and gobble them up. Most waders have under
their beaks a skin-pocket deep enough to hold a fish while carrying
it to their nestlings, or making ready to swallow it. All of these
sea-birds raise their young as far from the shore and from hunters
as possible. Great flocks of them roost on islands fifteen or twenty
miles out in the ocean, and fly into the bays every morning.
Wild ducks, geese, the herons, mud-hens, sandpipers, and curlews are
marsh and shore birds that feed and wade in the shallow salt water,
and nest on the banks or, like the heron, in trees near the bay. The
heron is a frog-catcher, and he will stand very still on his long legs
and patiently wait till the frog, thinking him gone, swims near. Then
one dart of the long bill captures froggy, and the heron waits for
another. You know the red-head, green mallard, canvas-back, and small
teal ducks, no doubt, and have seen the flocks of wild geese flying
and calling in the sky, or standing like patches of snow as they feed
in the marshes or grain-fields.
Down on the mud-flats at low tide you see birds called rails, and also
"kill-dee" plovers. The shoveller ducks are there, too fishing up with
broad, flat beaks little crabs and such creatures as are in the mud,
straining out mud and water, but swallowing the rest. All these birds
are "waders" and delight in mud and cold salt water. They are usually
quiet, or make only strange, shrill cries.
In the sunny fields and woods we shall find many of the land-birds,
and first comes a family whose habits are so like those of chickens
that they are called "scratchers." These birds depend for food upon
seeds and bugs or worms they scratch out of the ground. Up in
the Sierra sugar-pines and fir-woods lives the largest of these
"scratchers," the brown grouse. He is a shy creature, rising out of
his feeding-ground with a great whirring of wings and out of sight
before the hunter can fire at him. His peculiar cry, or "drumming," as
it is called, sounds through the woods like tapping hard on a hollow
log. His equally shy neighbor is the mountain-quail, while through
the farming lands and all along the hillsides the valley--quail are
plenty. Perhaps you have seen a happy family of these speckled brown
birds. Papa quail has a black crest on his head, and he calls "Look
right here" from the wrong side of the road to fool you, while Mamma
and her little, cunning chicks scatter like flying brown leaves in the
brush. After the danger is past, you hear her low call to bring them
round her again. In the desert and sage-brush part of the state the
sage-hen, another "scratcher," runs swiftly through the thickets, but
many are caught and brought in by the Indians.
Our birds of prey are eagles, vultures, hawks, owls, and the
turkey-buzzards, those big black scavengers that hang in the air. In
circles high above woods and fields some of these birds of prey sweep
on broad wings, searching with keen sight for their food in some dead
animal far below. The California condor, a great black vulture-like
bird, is almost extinct, and is only found in the highest mountains.
It is very large of wing, and strong enough, it is said, to carry off
a sheep. Both golden and bald eagles nest in tall trees in the wildest
parts of the state. The chicken-hawk, whose swift sailing over the
poultry-yard calls out loud squawking from the frightened hens,
you have often seen, and the wise-looking brown owls, too. A small
burrowing owl lives in the squirrel holes, and you may catch him
easily in the daytime, when he cannot see.
The road-runner is of the cuckoo family of birds. It seldom flies, but
runs swiftly along the roads, or in the desert, and is said to kill
rattlesnakes by placing a ring of thorny cactus leaves around the
snake as it lies asleep. The rattler is then pecked to death, since it
cannot get out of its prickly cage. This fowl is like a slender brown
hen in size.
In the redwoods you hear the tap, tap, of the "carpenter" woodpecker,
with his black coat and gay red cap. He drills holes in the bark of a
tree with his strong beak and then fits an acorn neatly into each safe
little storehouse. It is thought that worms and grubs fatten while
living in these acorns, so that the woodpecker always has a meal ready
in the winter when the ground is wet, or the squirrels have carried
off the acorns under the trees.
Humming-birds, or "hummers," as the boys call them, are plenty in city
and country and so fearless that they will take a bath in the spray
of the garden-hose, or dart their long bills in the fuchsias almost
within your reach. The bill shields a double tongue, which gets not
only honey, but small insects from the flower or off the leaves. The
humming-bird's tiny nest is a soft, round basket, not much bigger than
half a walnut-shell, and holding two eggs, which are like small-white
beans. Bits of moss and gray cobwebs are woven in this nest till it
looks like the branch itself; and here the little mother in her plain
brown dress hatches out and feeds the baby "hummers." Her husband has
glistening ruby feathers at his throat and green spots on his head and
back that glow in the sun like jewels.
The highest class of birds is the "perchers," and many friends of
yours belong to this. There are two families, however, of perchers,
those that call and the song-birds. Calling over and over their
peculiar note, the pewees, flycatchers, and king-birds, fly through
the forests. The crow and blue jay belong to the singers, you will
be surprised to hear. And what a crowd of these song-birds there
are trilling and warbling in the sunshine! Have you ever watched the
meadow-lark singing as he sits on guard on the fence, while the rest
of his brown-coated yellow-vested flock run along the field picking up
seeds and insects?
Then there are the linnets, or "redheads," who sing their sweet,
merry tunes all summer, and if they do take a cherry or two the farmer
should not grumble. They destroy many bugs and caterpillars and eat
weed-seeds that might trouble the fruit-grower more than the missing
cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits
through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and country.
Song-sparrows, thrushes, and bluebirds warble far and near, while the
red-winged blackbird makes music in wet, swampy places. The robin,
who comes to city gardens in the winter, has a summer home in the
mountains or redwoods. There, too, the saucy jay screams and chatters,
and flashes his blue wings as he flies, scolding all the time.
In Southern California, among the orange groves or in gardens, the
mocking-bird trills in sweet, liquid notes his wonderful song. He
mimics, too, many sounds he hears, and sometimes when caged will
whistle tunes or say words. The mocker can crow or cackle like the
chickens, or mew like the cat. Then he will whistle clear and loud
till dogs or boys answer his call. When they find themselves fooled,
it is said, he mimics a laugh.
From April to July the birds are busy, nesting, feeding their
families, or teaching them to fly. Many eggs never hatch, and some
are destroyed by wild animals. Boys often rob a whole nest to have one
little blown egg in their collections. Then again the mother is killed
and her brood starves to death. When the parent birds are teaching the
nestlings to fly, cats also catch the little ones. So you see the poor
feathered things have many enemies.
Let us try to protect the birds, and to let them live happy lives
in freedom. Each one will thank you, either with sweet songs or with
being a beautiful thing to see on land or ocean.
[Illustration: YOUNG TOWHEE.]
[Illustration: BABY YELLOW WARBLERS. From photographs by Elizabeth
Grinnell.]
OUR WILD ANIMALS
Once upon a time, when the Spanish owned this state and called it
their province of Alta California, there were great herds of antelope
feeding on the grassy plains, and at every little stream elk and deer
and big grizzly bears came down to drink. No fences had been built,
and the wild animals had never heard a rifle-shot. Free and fearless
they ranged valley and hillside, or made their dens in the thick
brush, or "chaparral," as the Spanish called it.
Indian hunters watched the paths over which these wild creatures
travelled to water, and killed deer and antelope with their arrows.
But these hunters were afraid of grizzly bears, for an arrow in Mr.
Bear's thick hide only made him cross, and with one hug, or even a
light blow from his paw, he could cripple the poor Indian. So in those
early days the old bears came year after year, and carried off sheep
and cattle. The simple folks did not even try to kill them. Indeed,
many of the red men believed that very bad Indians were punished by
being turned into grizzly bears when they died, and they would not
hurt their brothers, they said.