In the course of a trip I made during the summer of that year through Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties, the deplorable effects of the drought were everywhere visible—­leafless fields, dead and dying cattle, dead bees, and half-dead people with dusty, doleful faces.  Even the birds and squirrels were in distress, though their suffering was less painfully apparent than that of the poor cattle.  These were falling one by one in slow, sure starvation along the banks of the hot, sluggish streams, while thousands of buzzards correspondingly fat were sailing above them, or standing gorged on the ground beneath the trees, waiting with easy faith for fresh carcasses.  The quails, prudently considering the hard times, abandoned all thought of pairing.  They were too poor to marry, and so continued in flocks all through the year without attempting to rear young.  The ground-squirrels, though an exceptionally industrious and enterprising race, as every farmer knows, were hard pushed for a living; not a fresh leaf or seed was to be found save in the trees, whose bossy masses of dark green foliage presented a striking contrast to the ashen baldness of the ground beneath them.  The squirrels, leaving their accustomed feeding-grounds, betook themselves to the leafy oaks to gnaw out the acorn stores of the provident woodpeckers, but the latter kept up a vigilant watch upon their movements.  I noticed four woodpeckers in league against one squirrel, driving the poor fellow out of an oak that they claimed.  He dodged round the knotty trunk from side to side, as nimbly as he could in his famished condition, only to find a sharp bill everywhere.  But the fate of the bees that year seemed the saddest of all.  In different portions of Los Angeles and San Diego counties, from one half to three fourths of them died of sheer starvation.  Not less than 18,000 colonies perished in these two counties alone, while in the adjacent counties the death-rate was hardly less.

[Illustration:  WILD BUCKWHEAT.—­A BEE RANCH IN THE WILDERNESS.]

Even the colonies nearest to the mountains suffered this year, for the smaller vegetation on the foot-hills was affected by the drought almost as severely as that of the valleys and plains, and even the hardy, deep-rooted chaparral, the surest dependence of the bees, bloomed sparingly, while much of it was beyond reach.  Every swarm could have been saved, however, by promptly supplying them with food when their own stores began to fail, and before they became enfeebled and discouraged; or by cutting roads back into the mountains, and taking them into the heart of the flowery chaparral.  The Santa Lucia, San Rafael, San Gabriel, San Jacinto, and San Bernardino ranges are almost untouched as yet save by the wild bees.  Some idea of their resources, and of the advantages and disadvantages they offer to bee-keepers, may be formed from an excursion that I made into the San Gabriel Range about the beginning