while the profits thus far have been greater.  In 1856 honey sold here at from one and a half to two dollars per pound.  Twelve years later the price had fallen to twelve and a half cents.  In 1868 I sat down to dinner with a band of ravenous sheep-shearers at a ranch on the San Joaquin, where fifteen or twenty hives were kept, and our host advised us not to spare the large pan of honey he had placed on the table, as it was the cheapest article he had to offer.  In all my walks, however, I have never come upon a regular bee-ranch in the Central Valley like those so common and so skilfully managed in the southern counties of the State.  The few pounds of honey and wax produced are consumed at home, and are scarcely taken into account among the coarser products of the farm.  The swarms that escape from their careless owners have a weary, perplexing time of it in seeking suitable homes.  Most of them make their way to the foot-hills of the mountains, or to the trees that line the banks of the rivers, where some hollow log or trunk may be found.  A friend of mine, while out hunting on the San Joaquin, came upon an old coon trap, hidden among some tall grass, near the edge of the river, upon which he sat down to rest.  Shortly afterward his attention was attracted to a crowd of angry bees that were flying excitedly about his head, when he discovered that he was sitting upon their hive, which was found to contain more than 200 pounds of honey.  Out in the broad, swampy delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the little wanderers have been known to build their combs in a bunch of rushes, or stiff, wiry grass, only slightly protected from the weather, and in danger every spring of being carried away by floods.  They have the advantage, however, of a vast extent of fresh pasture, accessible only to themselves.

The present condition of the Grand Central Garden is very different from that we have sketched.  About twenty years ago, when the gold placers had been pretty thoroughly exhausted, the attention of fortune-seekers—­not home-seekers—­was, in great part, turned away from the mines to the fertile plains, and many began experiments in a kind of restless, wild agriculture.  A load of lumber would be hauled to some spot on the free wilderness, where water could be easily found, and a rude box-cabin built.  Then a gang-plow was procured, and a dozen mustang ponies, worth ten or fifteen dollars apiece, and with these hundreds of acres were stirred as easily as if the land had been under cultivation for years, tough, perennial roots being almost wholly absent.  Thus a ranch was established, and from these bare wooden huts, as centers of desolation, the wild flora vanished in ever-widening circles.  But the arch destroyers are the shepherds, with their flocks of hoofed locusts, sweeping over the ground like a fire, and trampling down every rod that escapes the plow as completely as if the whole plain were a cottage garden-plot without a fence.  But notwithstanding