136 ERYTHEA. 



Springs there are, indeed, but hidden — unless you happen "to 

 know," the search for tlieni would be well-nigh fruitless. 



Disintegrating rock is everywhere; boulders are falling and 

 crumbling, even on "The Ridge," and from the highest peaks as 

 well as from the edges of the sea-cliffs. It will consume an hour 

 to make an ascent of fi'om two to three hundred feet in such 

 places, every rock, great and small, breaking into pieces at touch 

 of hand or foot. Such cliinbing, it is needless to say, is dangerous. 

 It is, however, only after such efforts that one can properly estimate 

 the common blessing of being able to walk about, without thought,, 

 on a reliable foundation. 



There is a tragic significance in the large number of slopes which 

 are covered with the bleaching trunks and roots of trees and 

 shrubs, uprooted, doubtless, by the rocks which crumble in the 

 swiftly-running waters, for in the heavy rains the fall is great and 

 very fast. One asks, "What is to replace these thousands of trees 

 and bushes?" Adenostoma, Heteromeles, Ceanothus cuneatus, 

 Cercocarpus, Rhamnus, Eriogonum, Artemisia, Salvia? On the 

 other hand, there are some species which seem to be less on the 

 decline or are more than holding their own. 



The fine-rooted Rhus integrifolia, R. laurina and R. ovata cling 

 to the perilous edges of every sea-cliff. Cerasus ilicifolia holds 

 slope after slope as its territory, rising from twenty to forty and 

 even to fifty feet in height, twisting about the rocks, its long roots 

 exposed from fifteen to twenty feet. It seems as though in time 

 this cherry would cover all the northern slopes at least. The var. 

 integrifolia forms groves on moist slopes, and indeed fills many 

 small canons. It differs from the ordinary form as follows : 30 to 

 50 feet high; leaves orbicular or obcordate, entire, never "spinosely 

 toothed," quite thin and shining, 3 to 6 in. long, petioles half as 

 long ; fruit always black, an inch in diameter. 



Ceanothus arboreus is abundant on all the high slopes, and is 

 twenty to twenty-five feet high. It blooms, in " a wet season," in 

 January ; the black fruit ripens in June. Ceanothus cuneatus, 

 var. niacrocarpus, in the same month gives to all the high, dry 

 slopes the appearance of having been visited by a light snow-storm. 

 The former species inhabits moist slopes, and its "clean trunk 

 and open but round head" is in great contrast to the gnarled. 



