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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



with seed in the late summer, a careful observer assures 

 me that they eat a plant which has no common name, so 

 far as I know. It grows in gravelly soil, and is from eight 

 to sixteen inches tall, according to its situation, of a frail 

 branching nature, very thin and daddy-long-leggish ; bot- 

 anists know it by a name almost as long as it is, Gayo- 

 phytum ramosissimum, the "most branchified." There 

 are many other edible seeds doubtless agreeable to deer; 

 those of the mock orange, Spanish bayonet, Indian wheat 

 (one of the sunflowers, also called the compass-plant), 

 the large vetch,* the pond-lily, and probably others 

 which the deer know well, and with which I am not 

 yet familiar. I have admitted nothing to this list until 

 after careful scrutiny. An intelligent resident of Kern 

 County, in the southern Sierra Reserve, was comprehensive 

 in his designation of the deer's proclivities in the matter 

 of food : " They eat 'most anything that a goat would 

 eat." But I have grave doubts whether the dainty little 

 Columbian blacktail would relish the bill-posters and 

 wind-driven flotsam of the sandlots or of Harlem Heights. 

 I am indebted to this man for one item of my bill of fare, 

 identified by the seed-vessels which he gave me, the 

 short-flowered pentstemon. Like the intelligent man that 

 he was, my informant had a few of these in his pocket; 

 their very touch, by mental association, helping him to 

 tide over a barren hour. The deer love the leaves of this 

 bush. Every naturalist sympathizes with this mental 

 trait. 



I should like information in regard to the following 

 items (may they be admitted to the list of food which deer 

 like?) : horse-mint, the close- jointed rush or reed of the 



* Vicia gigantea. 



