62 Notes of Animal Life in California. 
The orioles, finches, linnets and canaries, of rainbow 
colours, and indigenous to the country, of which there are 
over twenty-five species, the most of which carol delightful 
notes, and well worthy the arts of the bird fancier, are ex- 
tremely familiar and plentiful near houses, and in the 
neighbourhood of springs and water pools. The social 
blackbird, or chenate of California, in clattering, surging, 
fife-noising flocks, is seen in sections of cultivated lands, or 
the neighbourhood of swamps, often in such clouds and 
swarms as to seem myriads. The house martin was cur- 
tailed of the usual rations of mud for his adobe nests, and 
is very scarce generally ; but the blue-coated swallow has 
made up for his absence, and fills the air near sunset, 
cramming his crops with musquitoes and such vermin as 
most infest the heavy atmosphere of the declining day. 
We forgot to mention the velvet, mouse-coloured mole, 
without eyes and with very small teeth; he is “death” on 
“garden sarce,” Hoot owls or ¢akalotees make awful music 
and bar-room too-loo-koos in the groves near by, looking 
after toads, frogs and birds and the little ground owl, a 
fellow-citizen in the burrows with squirrels and snakes. 
The ground owl is very spiteful. He is seen skimming 
and scouring near to earth, over the plains and hills, hunt- 
ing up his little bugs, beetles, mice and small frogs. He is 
a quick, choleric, nervous, excitable little fellow this Cali- 
fornia ground owl, the dimensions of a pigeon and gray as 
a badger. And badgers and possums are unwontedly 
familiar in places where they had not been seen before in 
years, and with skunks unusually plentiful, smelling not 
sweet but loud, they make havoc on eggs and chickens, and 
thank heaven, squirrels and gophers they scatter some. 
And we are reminded here that Don Coyette, a mighty sly 
and greedy fellow, has made his teeth tell on many a fat 
young wether and calveling not out of the months, and 
which the herdsmen had taken his best care of, as most 
likely to live and make up some of his losses. As to tame 
animals, it is now undoubtedly well known throughout 
California, that no calving, foaling or lambing is worth a 
pound of salt. The mothers have no milk, and the young 
must die. 
It is a pity the natural history of California is not better 
known. It merely exists in long, dry, scientific lists and 
catalogues scattered in hundreds of volumes in every 
language and country of Europe and America, and no 
Goldsmith or Audubon has worked their gambols and tricks 
