flowing folds, with all its flowers in place, only toned down a little
as to their luxuriance, and a few new species introduced, such as the
hill lupines, mints, and gilias. The colors show finely when thus held
to view on the slopes; patches of red, purple, blue, yellow, and white,
blending around the edges, the whole appearing at a little distance like
a map colored in sections.

Above this lies the park and chaparral region, with oaks, mostly
evergreen, planted wide apart, and blooming shrubs from three to ten
feet high; manzanita and ceanothus of several species, mixed with
rhamnus, cercis, pickeringia, cherry, amelanchier, and adenostoma, in
shaggy, interlocking thickets, and many species of hosackia, clover,
monardella, castilleia, etc., in the openings.

The main ranges send out spurs somewhat parallel to their axes,
inclosing level valleys, many of them quite extensive, and containing a
great profusion of sun-loving bee-flowers in their wild state; but these
are, in great part, already lost to the bees by cultivation.

Nearer the coast are the giant forests of the redwoods, extending from
near the Oregon line to Santa Cruz. Beneath the cool, deep shade of
these majestic trees the ground is occupied by ferns, chiefly woodwardia
and aspidiums, with only a few flowering plants--oxalis, trientalis,
erythronium, fritillaria, smilax, and other shade-lovers. But all along
the redwood belt there are sunny openings on hill-slopes looking to the
south, where the giant trees stand back, and give the ground to the
small sunflowers and the bees. Around the lofty redwood walls of these
little bee-acres there is usually a fringe of Chestnut Oak, Laurel, and
Madrono, the last of which is a surpassingly beautiful tree, and a great
favorite with the bees. The trunks of the largest specimens are seven or
eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the bark red and chocolate
colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy, like those of _Magnolia
grandiflora_, while the flowers are yellowish-white, and urn-shaped, in
well-proportioned panicles, from five to ten inches long. When in full
bloom, a single tree seems to be visited at times by a whole hive of
bees at once, and the deep hum of such a multitude makes the listener
guess that more than the ordinary work of honey-winning must be going
on.

How perfectly enchanting and care-obliterating are these withdrawn
gardens of the woods--long vistas opening to the sea--sunshine sift