60 Notes of Animal Life in California. 
It is interesting to mention that enclosed in the ice-house 
witH the salmon ova were two bundles of heather and 
a few shrubs, as an experiment, to try this plan of sending 
trees. They have been reported upon as follows:— “The 
six apple trees and the two species of heath (vulgaris and 
ciliaris), three plants of each, are in a most perfect condi- 
tion. There is not even a decayed leaf on the heaths, and 
all the plants are in as perfect health as if they had only 
been lifted out of the nursery on the day they were un- 
shipped.” We heartily congratulate all parties concerned on 
the great success which will eventually crown their efforts to 
stock the streams and ponds of Australia with this, the 
most delicious and costly of the finny tribe. 
Efi D. 
NOTES OF ANIMAL LIFE IN CALIFORNIA. 
S the capricious and extraordinary season advances, 
the zoological life of the ‘valleys and mountains, 
pestilent to the cultivator but diverting to him who wanders 
by flood and field, increases and multiplies. The ground 
squirrels, the kangaroo or jumping rat, and gopher mole, 
furnished with pouches and baskets to store spare morsels 
—all three of which burrowing animals are represented in 
California by distinct species of each family—abound and 
multiply as they never seemed to abound heretofore, and 
almost defy efforts of extermination. They all breed below 
the earth in colonies, and not only devour the crops of 
vegetables and grass onthe surface, but attack with greedi- 
ness the roots’ of all fruit trees under ground and com- 
mit an immense amount of injury. The squirrel is said to 
bring forth six at a birth, four or five times a year, and the 
other two congeners four every three months, which is 
about as bad as rats and rabbits. 
The kangaroo rat, however, is confined to a few localities 
on the coast and in the mountain valleys, but is specially 
abundant in many parts of the Tulare country. There are 
‘not less than twenty kinds of these small rodentia not bigger 
than a squirrel, which are met with inside the confines of 
alifornia, several of which live above ground, and seldom 
trouble the farmer ; but all the underground ones are his 
