150 East and West 
the lonely hills. These parks are, in most 
instances, as level and smooth as a floor, 
always surrounded by spreading live oaks and 
in spring carpeted with flowers. There are 
many of these, scattered over a large area and 
hidden in unexpected places, but never so 
concealed as to elude the flowers which by 
some prescience of their own have found them 
out; as if indeed, they travel through the 
land like pioneers looking for a good camping 
ground, and wherever they come upon a likely 
place establish themselves forthwith. The 
good lands are thus thickly settled with these 
floral colonies and wherever they are, there 
come the bees, quite ‘as the ministers and the 
doctors find their way to the frontier posts 
of civilisation, rendering their service to the 
community and extracting their living from 
di 
How old these settlements are, who can 
say. What countless generations of flowers 
have come and gone. Yet there was a time 
when the pioneer seeds drifted or were carried 
over the ranges, or floated down the creeks, 
and by some means lodged themselves. With- 
out the winds and the birds to carry the seed 
and the bees to fertilise the flowers, they could 
never have accomplished it. This migratory 
