IN CALIFORNIA 53 



ago; a few date back to the days of the Padres. 

 Many, as might be expected, are plants of the Medi- 

 terranean region, and have reached California by 

 way of Mexico and South America in vessels that 

 discharged at San Diego, Monterey or San Fran- 

 cisco. Thence they have spread gradually over the 

 State. In early days the herds of cattle and horses 

 and bands of sheep carried in their hairy coats many 

 a clinging seed, which fell miles from its parent, 

 and germinating in soil to its taste, grew to plants 

 that bore other seeds which in their turn were 

 caught up and conveyed still farther afield, until 

 whole valleys were sown that a few years before 

 knew no such plant. 



The most remarkable case of this kind is per- 

 haps the wild oat (Avena fatua), which though a 

 native of Europe is the most abundant of Califor- 

 nia's wild grasses, and clothes the hills and valleys 

 of winter and early spring with a green as vivid as 

 Ireland's. Hittell, in his history of the State, says 

 that as late as 1835 it was confined to the region 

 south of San Francisco ; then with the extension of 

 white settlements to the north, the flocks and herds 

 began to spread it northward. Twenty years later, 

 in 1855, Dr. Newberry, the botanist of the William- 

 son Survey, stated that the greater part of the Sac- 

 ramento Valley, as well as the San Joaquin and the 



