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slopes, keeping the rank vegetation which clothes them almost perpetually dripping. The redwoods themselves rise to a height of one to three hundred feet or more, and attain immense size. Beneath their shade springs up an almost impenetrable undergrowth of flowering shrubs and trees—California lilac, tea-oak, pine, ceonotus, laurel, or the fragrant bay, buckeye, manzanita, poison-oak, the giant California honeysuckle, which, half bush, half vine, rises to a height of ten to twenty feet, and from its thousands of trumpet-shaped flowers, tinted like the wild crab-apple blossoms, loads the atmosphere with a delicious perfume; and last, but not least, the madrono, pride of the forest, and fairest of all the trees of earth. These woods are for the most part in a native state. Here and there the axe and saw-mill have made sad havoc, but in the more mountainous and least accessible localities the forest stretches unbroken for miles and miles, and silence reigns supreme. Horse trails are few, and the dense undergrowth and the ruggedness of the country make traveling almost impossible. Here the grizzly bear hides in security, and from his mountain fastnesses sallies forth at intervals to forage on the flocks and herds, orchards and gardens, that dot the lowlands. Here also the California lion, wolf, fox, mink, raccoon, wild-cat, lynx, deer, eagle, and great vulture abound, within hearing of the whistle of the locomotive which sweeps through the valley of Santa Clara, and almost within reach of the echoes of the guns of Alcatraz, and the bells of the Golden City. It is still, to the great majority of the residents even of San Francisco, a