4 THe TAU D3 BO UN, YB yc aE eee 
an acacia — escape and smother the native shrubbery that is left in 
the woods. 
Through gorgeous wild country, past oak and chaparral covered hills, 
along the Carmel river with giant sycamores and maples, we drove to the 
Frances Simes Hastings Natural History Reservation in the Santa Lucia 
mountains where I was welcomed by Dr. and Mrs. Jean Linsdale. On this 
1,600 acre reserve native plants and animals are protected impartially; in 
the 10 years of this regime the range has been gradually coming back to 
the original bunch grass, and ground squirrels that throve on the over- 
grazed land have disappeared. 
Dr. Linsdale follows with his students Agassiz’s admonition, “Study 
nature, not books;” as the general semanticists say, he takes pains to keep 
distinct different levels of abstraction. He tells his helpers to lay aside all 
theories, find out exactly what the animal does, and record it so that others 
can use the record. With a great capacity for detail, with imagination and 
tireless energy, he and his co-workers have assembled in the museum re- 
markable collections of the plants, including seeds, molds, liverworts and 
lichens, and of the invertebrates found on the reserve; more than 100 
experts throughout the country have identified much of this material. With 
daily records of weather and animals seen, with banding of birds and mam- 
mals, intensive watching of nests and of animal behavior an overwhelming 
amount of information is being collected. 
A fine flock of yellow-billed magpies was starting to nest in the valley 
oaks around the house. From a window we watched a wildcat hunting 
mice; Dr. Linsdale said the black-tailed deer chase bobeats. One day as I 
was sketching flowers on the hillside I heard a rustling and out from a 
tangle came a little new fawn. It bleated, then walked with a slow, 
wobbly gait within a few feet of me; it lay down under a rose bush — 
S) 
before it were baby blue eyes, cream cups and shooting star. A junco 
sang and valley quail gave their strange, loud calls. 
At my sister’s in Piedmont, a suburb of Oakland, we heard wren-tits 
and mourning doves, song sparrows and valley quail, but the constant 
singing came from two pairs of Nuttall’s white-crowned sparrows that 
nested in the garden; the birds of one pair were fully adult, the other 
two were.in immature plumage. 
