EARTH COVERINGS 



275 



sides the evergreens there are the sumac, the 

 white and lavender lilacs, the madrofia, the 

 manzanita, the wild mahogany, the choke- 

 cherry, all rolled together along the hill-sides in 

 great velvet waves fifteen feet or more in height. 

 This is the chaparral the dense thicket where 

 the grizzly makes his home and breaks a path, 

 where the mule-deer skulks at noonday, but 

 where neither horse nor man finds easy thor- 

 oughfare. Desolate enough might be the hill- 

 sides of California, were it not for this thick 

 carpeting of bush and stunted tree. And were 

 it not for the grease-wood, the sage-brush, and 

 the spiny cactus, how very bare and dreary 

 would be the alkaline plains ! These growths 

 of the arid lands are far from being joyous, 

 but they are singularly appropriate to the land- 

 scape where they are seen. No other bushes, 

 save these hardy shrubs, would live there, and 

 nature does the best it can with every surface 

 given it to care for. 



The clothing of the hills that lie along the 

 Atlantic coast is something quite different from 

 that of the Pacific slope or the plains. There 

 is neither the density of the chaparral nor the 

 meagreness of the sage-brush. The growth 

 is more uniform. Oftentimes the laurel, the 



California 

 chaparral. 



Sage- 

 brush. 



