198 Sierra Club Bulletin. 



sustenance from these, in comparison with the deer's, 

 is just about as strong as the relative sense of direc- 

 tion and " locality," as a phrenologist would call it, in 

 the two creatures. Take the carrier pigeon and the deer, 

 on the one hand, and man, reason-guided and stumbling, 

 on the other : what a chasm separates them in the exercise 

 of this wonderful and to us almost inexplicable endow- 

 ment! In a similar manner, civilized man is one of the 

 weakest of animals in regard to food; until his slave, 

 fire, has half digested it for him, he remains starving in 

 the midst of plenty. 



In California the scrub oak always abounds in a good 

 deer range ; this is the standby of the deer, and they eat 

 with relish the yoimg growth of all the oak family grow- 

 ing in this part of the world. To begin with there are 

 three species of scrub oak* found in the valleys and on 

 the heights, and in the whole State no less than eleven 

 well-known species, with several obscure additional forms, 

 are found.f Next in the order of their preference comes 

 the Calif ornia lilac, both the white and the purple varieties ; 

 in various sections other names commend themselves. A 

 white lilac (Ceanothus integerrimus) is sometimes called 

 deer-brush, significant of the deer's liking for its leaves; 

 also mountain birch, from its delicate form, white tea-tree, 

 presumably because an infusion may be made from its 

 leaves, red-root, soap-bush, — the last very appropriate, 

 since in flower the bush with its white delicate masses of 

 bloom looks like the purest foam. This, however, is not 



* Quercus dumosa, Q, vacciniifolia, and Q. Breweri. 



t The black or Kellogg's oak, the live oak, the valley oak, the white 

 or Douglas oak, the small desert oak, Engelmann's live oak, the golden- 

 cupped white live oak, the chestnut or tanbark oak farther north and in 

 the Coast Range. 



