346 [Assembly 



valleys. As soon as the rainy season begins, the clover spring 

 up — grow very bushy — are very tender. The Indian Squaws 

 gather baskets of it, they roll it in their hands into balls which 

 they chew and then swallow. I went through the valley of San 

 Jose, it was from seventy to eighty miles in length, and in its 

 widest part about sixty miles. Clover is very abundant, so is 

 wild oats in this valley, that of San Juan and other valleys and 

 the hills also. One of the clovers of a large growth, called burr 

 clover, bearing burrs (about as large as ordinary peas) having the 

 seeds inside — grows over thousands of acres, and when the dry 

 season comes, these burrs cover the ground in numerous places 

 about two inches deep. 



Mr. Shelton. I have gathered three bushels of these burrs off 

 eighteen feet square. 



Mr. Dey. Droves of cattle and stock lap it up with their 

 tongues during the dry season, and it fattens them, while no green 

 food can be got by them, everything on the surface being perfectly 

 dry. 



Mr. Shelton exhibited a quantity of the burr clover seeds, and 

 his Herbarium. There are fifteen or sixteen varieties of clover 

 there — of all colors and very beautiful. I made splendid bo- 

 quets of clover heads only. One of the clovers is somewhat like 

 our red top. There is a striking difference between the vegeta- 

 tion of California and ours here, trees quite different. 



Mr. Dey. What we call, in California, the red wood seen>s to 

 be between red cedar and pine. I saw one of them which meas- 

 ured sixteen feet in diameter and was three hundred feet high. 

 This tree and many others have holes at the base, caused chiefly 

 by the practice of building fires against them. I measured one 

 of them which was entirely solid and it was fifteen feet in di- 

 ameter. 



Mr. Shelton. — I have seen timothy grass there, it is a native. 



I present some of the heads here. They are smaller than those of 



the best timothy grown in New- York. I have known from two 



J to five tons of hay to be cut of one acre. I have seen one root of 



clover tillered out so much as tacovereightfeet square, and some 



