SUMMER DAYS AT MOUNT SHASTA 



Nature clasp her small bee-babies and suckle 

 them, multitudes at once, on her warm Shasta 

 breast. Besides the common honey-bee there 

 are many others here, fine, burly, mossy fel- 

 lows, such as were nourished on the mountains 

 many a flowery century before the advent of 

 the domestic species bumble-bees, mason- 

 bees, carpenter-bees, and leaf-cutters. Butter- 

 flies, too, and moths of every size and pattern; 

 some wide-winged like bats, flapping slowly 

 and sailing in easy curves ; others like small fly- 

 ing violets shaking about loosely in short zigzag 

 flights close to the flowers, feasting hi plenty 

 night and day. 



Deer in great abundance come to Shasta 

 from the warmer foothills every spring to feed 

 in the rich, cool pastures, and bring forth their 

 young in the ceanothus tangles of the chapar- 

 ral zone, retiring again before the snowstorms 

 of winter, mostly to the southward and west- 

 ward of the mountain. In like manner the 

 wild sheep of the adjacent region seek the lofty 

 inaccessible crags of the summit as the snow 

 melts, and are driven down to the lower spurs 

 and ridges where there is but little snow, to the 

 north and east of Shasta. 



Bears, too, roam this foodful wilderness, 

 feeding on grass, clover, berries, nuts, ant-eggs, 

 fish, flesh, or fowl, whatever comes in their 

 39 



