TREES AND TREE-LIKE GROWTHS 43 



less to say, the omnivorous burros and the desert 

 cattle rejoice at sight of a bean-hung mesquit. 

 Many times, during expeditions that took us far 

 out of range of orthodox fodder, the situation has 

 been saved for Kaweah by our finding a mesquit or 

 two, the twigs pendent with plump clusters and the 

 ground whitened with the fallen fruit. I sometimes 

 feared that dislocation of the neck would be his por- 

 tion as I watched his giraffe-like manoeuvres over 

 the capture of some coy, high-hung bonne bouche. 

 Nature did a kind turn to her deserving poor when 

 she reserved the mesquit for the desert. 



The screwbean is a more spindling tree, sparser 

 of foliage, and content with poorer alkaline soils 

 where the other mesquit seldom cares to dwell. It is 

 equally good, perhaps even better, as a source of 

 food, but has little to offer in the way of shade — a 

 mere thin grayness that scarcely breaks the stroke 

 of the sun. In the diary of that fine Borrovian char- 

 acter, Fray Francisco Hermenegildo Garces, who 

 was roaming these deserts, with the enthusiasm of an 

 explorer as well as of a missionary, in the years just 

 about the birthtime of this nation on the other side 

 of the continent, one easily identifies the tornillo 

 when he writes that he has found a tree that bears 

 screws. Flora had one of her quaintest fancies when 

 she fashioned these odd seed-vessels, which one finds 

 sprinkled in tousled clusters all over the tree. 



Next in size to claim attention is the palo verde, 

 Cercidium torreyanum. To give the Spanish a literal 

 translation, it would be the "green stick," or, more 

 suavely, the "greenwood tree." It has no recognized 



