CHAPTER XVI 



THE BEE-PASTUKES 



WHEN California was wild, it was one sweet 

 bee-garden throughout its entire length, 

 north and south, and all the way across from the 

 snowy Sierra to the ocean. 



Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of 

 this virgin wilderness through the redwood for 

 ests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs 

 and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and 

 plain, park and grove, and deep, leafy glen, or far 

 up the piny slopes of the mountains throughout 

 every belt and section of climate up to the timber 

 line, bee-flowers bloomed in lavish abundance. 

 Here they grew more or less apart in special sheets 

 and patches of no great size, there in broad, flow 

 ing folds hundreds of miles in length zones of 

 polleny forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream- 

 tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden 

 composite, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of 

 bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species 

 blooming somewhere all the year round. 



But of late years plows and sheep have made sad 

 havoc in these glorious pastures, destroying tens of 

 thousands of the flowery acres like a fire, and ban 

 ishing many species of the best honey-plants to 



