1$78.] Walks Round San Francisco—The Bay Shore. 511 
by its juice. It lurks in every bunch of tall herbage, its glossy, 
green leaves and greenish racemes of flowers mingled with the 
vetches, phacelias, and other innocent plants in so intricate a way 
that it is almost impossible to collect them without contact with 
it. On the hillsides it is low and straggling, its roots running to 
great distances under the surface, and throwing up stems and 
: leaves in unexpected places; in the copses it forms large bushes, 
= alone or mingled with other shrubs; but in the forests it is a huge 
Climber, mounting the tall pines and firs and strangling them. 
When a climber, its leaves are much larger and lighter in color, 
and it is usually believed to be a different plant from its humbler 
brethren of the meadows, being distinguished as Poison ivy. 
There is but little of animal life on the down, for there is no 
Shelter for birds, or thicket-loving mammals. The ground-squir- 
tel, Spermophilus beecheyi, is present here as it is in every green 
field and every hill-side round the bay. 
Man has killed off its natural enemies, the smaller carnivorous 
mammals and the birds of prey, and has planted the once wild 
country with seeds that suit its appetite, so that it flourishes and 
increases in spite of poison, traps, and guns, till it is a terrible 
Nuisance to every farmer. The only other wild quadruped we 
find is not a mammal, but a lizard. We come upon two individ- 
uals among a heap of stones, and after quite a chase, capture one, 
a fine fellow, in a livery of reddish and yellowish-brown mixed 
with darker tints, It has quite a long tail as it is, yet it has evidently 
been mended at the tip. It is Gérrhonotus grandis. 
: We are now at the foot of the hill, close to the Chinese colony, 
_ from whose huts arises a most unsavory smell of rotting fish. 
Here we have John Chinaman at his lowest, dwelling in squalid 
huts with ground for the floor, yet even here his virtues of per- 
sistent industry, economy, and quickness to lay hold of every- 
thing which can be turned to account, are clearly evident. All 
the day these fishers work, their unwieldy flat-bottom boats are 
Scattered in all directions, and their nets are spread for big and 
little fish alike, spite of laws against the destruction of fry. The 
little fish disdainfully thrown on the shore and left to rot by the 
Italian fisherman, are by the Chinese gathered carefully up and 
dried. While the white laborers assemble by thousands to hear 
incendiary speeches, with occasional adjournments to the 
nearest saloon, John calmly works on. If the capitalist employs | 
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