THE BEE-PASTURES 349 



of angry bees that were flying excitedly about his 

 head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon 

 their hive, which was found to contain more than 

 200 pounds of honey. Out in the broad, swampy 

 delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, 

 the little wanderers have been known to build their 

 combs in a bunch of rushes, or stiff, wiry grass, only 

 slightly protected from the weather, and in dan 

 ger every spring of being carried away by floods. 

 They have the advantage, however, of a vast ex 

 tent of fresh pasture, accessible only to themselves. 

 The present condition of the Grand Central Gar 

 den is very different from that we have sketched. 

 About twenty years ago, when the gold placers 

 had been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the atten 

 tion of fortune-seekers not home-seekers was, 

 in great part, turned away from the mines to the 

 fertile plains, and many began experiments in a 

 kind of restless, wild agriculture. A load of lum 

 ber would be hauled to some spot on the free 

 wilderness, where water could be easily found, and 

 a rude box-cabin built. Then a gang-plow was 

 procured, and a dozen mustang ponies, worth ten 

 or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these hundreds 

 of acres were stirred as easily as if the land had 

 been under cultivation for years, tough, perennial 

 roots being almost wholly absent. Thus a ranch 

 was established, and from these bare wooden huts, 

 as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in 

 ever-widening circles. But the arch destroyers 

 are the shepherds, with their flocks of hoofed 

 locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and 

 trampling down every rod that escapes the plow 



