THE BEE-PASTURES 353 



and trees and everything alike, common business 

 and friends are happily forgotten, and even the 

 natural honey- work of bees, and the care of birds 

 for their young, and mothers for their children, 

 seem slightly out of place. 



To the northward, in Humboldt and the adjacent 

 counties, whole hillsides are covered with rhodo 

 dendron, making a glorious melody of bee-bloom 

 in the spring. And the Western azalea, hardly less 

 flowery, grows in massy thickets three to eight feet 

 high around the edges of groves and woods as far 

 south as San Luis Obispo, usually accompanied by 

 manzanita; while the valleys, with their varying 

 moisture and shade, yield a rich variety of the 

 smaller honey-flowers, such as mentha, lycopus, 

 micromeria, audibertia, trichostema, and other 

 mints ; with vaccinium, wild strawberry, geranium, 

 Calais, and goldenrod ; and in the cool glens along 

 the stream-banks, where the shade of trees is not 

 too deep, spiraea, dog- wood, heteromeles, and caly- 

 canthus, and many species of rubus form inter 

 lacing tangles, some portion of which continues 

 in bloom for months. 



Though the coast region was the first to be in 

 vaded and settled by white men, it has suffered less 

 from a bee point of view than either of the other 

 main divisions, chiefly, no doubt, because of the 

 unevenness of the surface, and because it is owned 

 and protected instead of lying exposed to the flocks 

 of the wandering " sheepmen." These remarks ap 

 ply more particularly to the north half of the coast. 

 Farther south there is less moisture, less forest 

 shade, and the honey flora is less varied. 



