Bee-Culture at Present 383 



One cannot wonder that the honey-bees have occupied 

 the Sierra after reading Muir's beautiful tribute to Mount 

 Shasta : — 



" Of all the upper flower fields of the Sierra, Shasta is the 

 most honeyful, and may yet surpass in fame the celebrated 

 honey hills of Hybla and heathy Hymettus. Regarding 

 this noble mountain from a bee point of view, encircled by 

 its many climates, and sweeping aloft from the torrid plain 

 into the frosty azure, we find the first five thousand feet 

 from the summit generally snow-clad, and therefore about as 

 honeyless as the sea. The base of this arctic region is 

 girdled by a belt of crumbling lava measuring about one thou- 

 sand feet in vertical breadth, and is mostly free from snow in 

 summer. Beautiful lichens enliven the faces of the cliffs 

 with their bright colors, and in some of the warmer nooks 

 there are a few tufts of Alpine daisies, wall-flowers, and 

 pentstemons ; but, notwithstanding these bloom freely in 

 the late summer, the zone as a whole is almost as honeyless 

 as the icy summit, and its lower edge may be taken as the 

 honey line. Immediately below this comes the forest zone, 

 covered with a rich growth of conifers, chiefly Silver Firs, 

 rich in pollen and honey-dew, and diversified with count- 

 less garden openings, many of them less than a hundred 

 yards across. Next, in orderly succession, comes the great 

 bee zone. Its area far surpasses that of the icy summit 

 and both the other zones combined, for it goes sweeping 

 majestically around the entire mountain, with a breadth 

 of six or seven miles and a circumference of nearly a 

 hundred miles." 



Bravo ! bravo ! noble Shasta, Hybla and Hymettus were 

 mere hillocks compared to thee. But they will live on, 

 saved from oblivion by the glory of ancient Greece, a more 

 lasting promise of immortahty than thy broad flowery 

 zones, 



