212 RESOUECES OF CALIFORNIA. 



California, and I fear that we have not yet seen the worst of 

 them, though several times during the last fifteen years tliey 

 liave eaten every green thing within large districts. They 

 come in millions upon millions, and darken the air, moving for- 

 ward at the rate of a mile or two a day, and leaving no grass 

 or leaf behind them. Grains, grass, weeds, kitchen vegetables, 

 and fruit-trees, are alike eaten bare of every green particle. 

 Grasshoppers are abundant in countries where the summers are 

 dry, the winters warm, and the vegetation vigorous ; and if a 

 large extent of land be uncultivated, they w^ill occasionally be 

 so numerous as to destroy every green thing. They are bred 

 in the hills of California, and after dry winters descend into 

 the valleys, usually content to eat the wild grasses, but some- 

 times attack the cultivated fields. There is no known method 

 of killing them after they have entered a field, or of driving 

 them away from it ; but they may be kept out by digging a 

 trench, putting straw in it, with some moist straw on tojo, and 

 then setting fire to it. The grasshoppers do not like the fii'e 

 and smoke, and will try to avoid them. 



Under the head of the grape and the orange, I have spoken 

 of the bugs which infest them. The army-worm has been seen 

 in California, but has done little damage as yet. The curculio 

 and w^eevil are not known in the state. The Canada thistle, 

 the muUen, and the dock, have been introduced, but have not 

 yet given much trouble. 



§ 156. Neat Cattle. — California has 1,100,000 neat cattle, 

 900,000 sheep, and 150,000 horses, nearly all bred in the open 

 air and open plains, and fed only on wild grasses. The system 

 of breeding live-stock differs much in California from that 

 which prevails in the Atlantic states, where cattle are kept in 

 fields and stables all the time, and fed with cultivated food. 

 Here domestic animals grow more rapidly, and reach their full 

 development earlier, than east of the Sierra Nevada. 



§ 157. Spanish Cattle. — Most of our neat cattle are of the 

 old Californian breed, brought hither by the Spanish mission- 

 aries from Mexico, about 1770. At what time their stock 



