FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



others to be hoped for, that the going thither 

 about once in so many days grew little by little 

 into something like a habit. Between the moist riv- 

 er-bank and the dry hillside, what a procession of 

 beautiful and interesting wild flowers the pro- 

 gress of the season led before me ! And if many 

 of them seemed to be the same as I had known 

 in the East, they were certain to be the same 

 with a difference : dogwood and azalea (blossom- 

 laden azalea hedges by the mile) ; tall columbines 

 and lilies ; yellow violets and blue larkspurs ; 

 salmon-berry and mariposa tulips ; an odd-looking 

 dwarf convolvulus, not observed elsewhere ; the 

 famous blood-red snow-plant, which there was 

 reported to be a heavy fine for picking ; and 

 whole gardens of tiny, high-colored, fairylike 

 blossoms, kind after kind and color after color, 

 growing mostly in separate parterres, " ground- 

 flowers in flocks," and veritable gems for bright- 

 ness, over which, in my ignorance, I could only 

 stand and wonder. 



Of birds, as compared with plants, the walk 

 might offer little in the line of novelty, but such 

 as it did offer, taking old and new together, they 

 were always enough to keep a man alive ; a pair 

 of golden eagles, for instance, soaring in the blue, 

 — a display of aviation, as we say in these pro- 

 gressive days, fitted to provoke the most earth- 

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