3/6 The Honey-Makers 



Muir, whose book, " The Mountains of CaUfornia," none 

 can afford to miss reading. 



He says : — 



" When Cahfornia was wild, it was one sweet bee-garden 

 throughout its entire length, north and south, and all the 

 way across from the snowy Sierra to the ocean. 



"Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this 

 virgin wilderness, — through the redwood forests, along the 

 banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands fronting 

 the sea, over valley and plain, park and grove, and deep, 

 leafy glen, or far up the piny slopes of the mountains, 

 throughout every belt and section of climate up to the tim- 

 ber line, — bee flowers bloomed in lavish abundance. Here 

 they grew more or less apart in special sheets and patches 

 of no great size, there in broad, flowering folds hundreds of 

 miles in length, — zones of poUeny forests, zones of flowery 

 chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of 

 golden compositae, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of 

 bryanthus and clover, and so on, certain species blooming 

 somewhere all the year round." 



Again, he is speaking of the bottom-lands along the 

 rivers : — 



" When I first saw this central garden, the most exten- 

 sive and regular of all the bee-pastures of the State, it 

 seemed all one sheet of plant gold, hazy and vanishing in 

 the distance, distinct as a new map along the foot-hills at 

 my feet. 



'' The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang their 

 blessed songs, rising on the wing as I advanced, then sink- 

 ing out of sight in the polleny sod, while myriads of wild 

 bees stirred the lower air with their monotonous hum, — 

 monotonous, yet forever fresh and sweet as every-day 

 sunshine." 



The hive-bee, not indigenous in this country, was brought 



