of these; the forming of an acquaintance with so many new trees, shrubs, and flowering herbs is of great interest, and increasingly so from day to day, as one comes to live with them in the different reserves.  The pleasure to be derived is cumulative—­each acquisition of knowledge adding to the satisfaction of that which comes after—­it is of a sort, however, to be experienced in the presence of the thing itself; any description at a distance must necessarily be shadowy and unreal, only the dry bones of something which one sees there, a thing of beauty and instinct with life.

The characteristic feature of these southern forests is their open nature; so far as the roughness of the mountains will permit, one may go anywhere in the saddle without being hindered by underbrush.  Outside of their limits, however, and on many hillsides within the reserves, the chaparral offers an impenetrable barrier; in some of them this growth has captured the greater portion of their surface.  The forests themselves are often very beautiful; growing, as they do, openly, there is constant sunlight during many months of the year, so that all the ground is warm and vibrant with energy.  As a natural consequence, great individuality is shown in the tree forms, as different as possible from the gloom and severe uniformity of the Oregon and Washington forests.  The former are dry, light, and cheerful; the latter, moist, dark, silent, and somewhat forbidding.  The northern forests of the Coast have their attractive features, to be sure; they are fecund, solemn, and majestic, but the prevailing note is not cheerfulness, as here in the south.

In a paper of the present proportions it is impossible to give, except in outline, a report of the summer’s work.  I began at San Juan Capistrano, one of the old mission towns with a beautiful ruin, lying near the sea on the west of the Trabuco Canyon Reserve.  My first cruise was through a chaparral country on the slope overlooking the Pacific.  I learned here of few deer and of relentless warfare against such as remain.  After that, from Elsinore, strange echo of that sea-girt castle in Shakespeare’s Denmark, I cruised so as to have as well an understanding of the eastern slope of this, the smallest of the Coast reserves.  From Trabuco Peak we could study the physical geography of the northern half of its area.  I saw here what I did not again come across in California—­a small flock of the band-tailed pigeon, a bird as large as the mountain quail, very handsome, indeed, and one that now should be protected by law.  These, as well as the mountain quail, swallow whole the acorns, which this season lay beneath the live oak trees in lavish abundance; long thin acorns, quite different from ours.  In the San Jacinto Reserve I made a cruise through the southern half; much of this section is clothed in scrub oak, with scattered deer throughout.  In the northern and more mountainous portions, on the contrary, one finds himself in the open forest, the summer range of the deer.  At the time of our visit these were at a lower altitude, in the chaparral and among the scrub oaks of the foothills.