Field-Days in California 



A CALIFORNIA BEACH 



OUR Santa Barbara beach, taken by itself, is 

 not much to talk about. Whetherfor length, 

 breadth, hardness, or cleanliness, you may read- 

 ily find numbers to surpass it. But for a bird- 

 student's purposes it is a reasonably good beach, 

 nevertheless ; in the run of the year it will show 

 him many a good thing, while for the simple 

 lover of beauty it will hold up its end in any 

 comparison. 



Immediately at its back, beyond the railway 

 and the cobweb of telegraph-wires strung beside 

 it, rise the Santa Ynez Mountains, filling the hori- 

 zon with a magnificent curving reach — a visible 

 reach, I mean to say — of fifty miles, more or 

 less. Easterly, down the coast, where the range, 

 seen from this point, seems to jut into the ocean, 

 the lower peaks are of rarely picturesque shapes ; 

 and, dressed in the soft morning or evening light, 

 especially, the whole serrated range, three or 

 four thousand feet in altitude and covered with 

 evergreen chaparral, is of a truly exquisite beauty. 



