IN CALIFORNIA 55 



nest in the trees ; the rivers flow upside down, and a 

 man's wild oats are a crop worth harvesting!" 



Mixed more or less nowadays with other grasses 

 throughout California is the European wall- or 

 mouse-barley (Hordeum murinum). Foxtail, Cali- 

 fornians call it, and it is a serious nuisance when 

 old because of the bristly floral spikes. These then 

 break up, and the long awns are not only liable to 

 make trouble in the mouths of animals, but they 

 work their pestiferous way through people's cloth- 

 ing and into the cracks and openings of their shoes 

 to the prodigious discomfort of the wearers. Still 

 another wild pasture-plant, which by many botanists 

 though not by all, is held to have been introduced 

 from southern Europe, is the stork Vbill, a member 

 of the geranium family (Er odium cicutarium) , com- 

 monly known as pin-grass or filaree the latter 

 word a corruption of the herb's Spanish name al- 

 filerilla, meaning a little pin. It carpets pretty 

 much all of wild California out in the sun, that the 

 wild oat has not monopolized, and is equally valued 

 as pasturage. It is a pretty little plant that 

 spreads its leafy rosettes, often tinged with red, 

 over hundreds of miles of the winter earth. Soon 

 after New Year's, little stars of magenta bloom 

 begin to glimmer in the sod, and as the petals fade 



