AGRICULTURE AND SOILS OF CALIFORNIA. 495 
southern part of the State especially this industry is practiced on a 
scale not often to be met with elsewhere, as can readily be seen from 
the figures showing the export, amounting in 1878 to no less than three 
and a half millions of pounds. How kindly the honey-bee takes to even 
the desert region of that country is well illustrated in what has been 
supposed by many to be a “snake” story, but what is an unquestion- 
able fact; namely, that some miners prospecting in Arizona struck a 
regular ‘‘fissure vein” of honey in a rocky ridge, where the bees had 
_ been making deposits for years, and, although the vein-contents were 
not what they had been searching for, they teok to it Kindly and worked 
it, extracting therefrom a fabulous amount of honey. Another adven- 
turous colony took possession of the court-house cupola at San Ber- 
nardino, and had accumulated several hundred pounds of honey when 
discovered. The beeis very fond of the flower of the mountain sage 
(Artemisia), as weil as of a number of other desert plants, and is thus 
afforded unlimited pasture through three-fourths of the year. It seems 
that certain kinds of flowers, not yet identified, impart to the honey a 
tendency to become turbid after straining, from the separation of minute 
white crystals, whose nature has not as yet been ascertained. Such 
honey, whose other qualities are generally of the highest, has been un- 
justly suspected of adulteration in Kastern and English markets. The 
prejudice arising from this merely conventional defect will soon be 
overcome, and South California will doubtless become one of, if not the 
largest, honey-producing country of the world. 
Stik-culiwre is at present almost extinct in California in consequence 
of the reaction against the mania for this industry that began in the 
State some eighteen years ago and raged with unabated fury for several 
years, inflicting severe losses upon those who indulged in the popular 
' delusion that the silkworm would thrive in the State without any special 
precautions in the way of shelier and such intelligent care as can be 
given only by those-versed in its treatment. Some of the airy sheds 
that were supposed to be an adequate protection against the compara- 
tively slight changes of temperature are still extant, as monuments of 
that flush period when mulberry trees were thought to be the only nur- 
sery stock worth having. It can hardly be doubied that the advantages 
oitered by a climate in which the food of the worm is available during 
all but two or three months in the year, yet free from the excessive heat 
that elsewhere militates against the insect’s well-being, will ultimately 
assert themselves in the resumption of silk-culture in a calmer mood. 
It has been very successfully ketp up, on a small scale, by Mr. Gustavus 
Neumann, of San Francisco, showing pretty conclusively that it is not 
the nature of the climate, but adverse commercial and industrial cireum- 
stances that at present keep the rise of silk-culture in check. 
Alongside of the useful animals of California, some mention of the in- 
jurious ones should also bemade. The grizzly bear and puma, or Califor- 
nia lion, have ceased to possess more than an occasional local interest 
to farmers ; but the sneaking coyote, freed from the competition of the 
stronger animals, finds the conditions of his existence rather improved 
than otherwise by the multiplication of flocks on the mountain sides, 
where the thick “chaparrel” affords him a refuge from which it is not 
easy to dislodge him. Both he and the wildcat still range in sight of 
“the city,” and make their presence felt in occasional inroads upon val- 
uable flocks. But the damage thus done is insignificant in comparison 
with the ravages of a much more peaceful animal, to which civilization 
has afforded additional safety and means of subsistence. This is the 
ground-squirrel (Sciwrus Fossor), which the immigrant at first is inclined 
