Notes of Animal Life in California. 61 
unrelenting and pertinacious enemies. One of the sylvan 
rats, twice the size of a mouse, constructs a nest of sticks 
in the unmolested oak groves, as big as an Indian hut and 
as high as a two-cord pile of wood. 
The fore-mentioned rvodentia increase in a tremendous 
ratio in the settled parts of the State where the cultivators 
and herdsmen have thinned off their natural destroyers— 
the bears, lions, coyotes, cats, skunks, ferrets, hawks, owls 
and snakes. Every green crop is attacked by the squirrel, 
and they are terrible on all eggs and young chickens, and 
very wasteful where grain and hay are stored. 
A traveller wandering in the country a few days ago, 
came across a mustard field in blossom, where he sat down 
for hours admiring the hundreds—the swarms of humming _ 
birds, hunting up musquitoes and aphids, flashing in and 
out and filling their crops to depletion among the fragrant 
flowers of the beef-eater’s condiment, which by the way, 
makes the best of honey pasture for the busy bee in Cali- 
fornia. 
Bears and lions have made great havoc among the cattle 
and horses, as their food of oats and wild fruits is every- 
where scarce this season. As the former are thick in the 
mountain pastures where the stock animals have been re- 
cently taken, which have to be accustomed and acclimated 
to their new ranges, great numbers have been lost; and it 
is feared that the sheep in thousands will soon fall a prey 
to these enemies, if not to regular nostalagia, before they 
can be thinned off by December. 
Ants, flies, musquitoes and tarantulas, with all sorts of 
weasels and bugs, infest the air and the water in vicinities 
where they were very seldom known before, and are be- 
coming excessively troublesome. 
Geese and ducks have been multitudinously abundant 
and familiar, and have effected much damage in localities 
where the young grass is first seen and longest preserved, 
doing great injury to young grain. Crows, ravens, and 
rooks, are as thick as musquitoes near willow swamps, and 
a bigger set of thieving rascals never waylaid the good 
things of the farmer or orchardist, and the black villains 
now turn up their noses at worms and caterpillars. 
Hundreds of hives of bees in lazy, neglectful or ignorant 
hands, have deserted to the forests or been starved out, as 
their flowery pastures dry up early in February ; and even 
among experienced apiarists they will do very bad, and 
occasion unusual expense and labour. 
