Let us try to protect the birds, and to let them live happy lives in freedom.  Each one will thank you, either with sweet songs or with being a beautiful thing to see on land or ocean.

[Illustration:  YOUNG TOWHEE.]

[Illustration:  BABY YELLOW WARBLERS.  From photographs by Elizabeth Grinnell.]

OUR WILD ANIMALS

Once upon a time, when the Spanish owned this state and called it their province of Alta California, there were great herds of antelope feeding on the grassy plains, and at every little stream elk and deer and big grizzly bears came down to drink.  No fences had been built, and the wild animals had never heard a rifle-shot.  Free and fearless they ranged valley and hillside, or made their dens in the thick brush, or “chaparral,” as the Spanish called it.

Indian hunters watched the paths over which these wild creatures travelled to water, and killed deer and antelope with their arrows.  But these hunters were afraid of grizzly bears, for an arrow in Mr. Bear’s thick hide only made him cross, and with one hug, or even a light blow from his paw, he could cripple the poor Indian.  So in those early days the old bears came year after year, and carried off sheep and cattle.  The simple folks did not even try to kill them.  Indeed, many of the red men believed that very bad Indians were punished by being turned into grizzly bears when they died, and they would not hurt their brothers, they said.

When Father Serra’s Mission people were starving at Monterey, the Padre learned that at a place called Bear Valley near by, there were many grizzlies which the Indians would not kill.  He sent Spanish soldiers there, and they shot so many bears that the hungry Mission family had meat enough to last till a ship came from Mexico with supplies.

Of all flesh-eating animals this grizzly bear is the largest and strongest.  He can knock down a bull with his great paws, or kill and carry off a horse.  He can live on wild berries and acorns with grass and roots he digs out of the ground, yet fresh meat suits him best, and he prefers a calf, which he holds as a cat does a mouse.

Nothing but stock was raised in California in those days so long ago, and cattle were counted by the thousands and sheep by tens of thousands.  Then the grizzly and cinnamon, or brown, bear feasted all the time on stray calves and yearlings.  Every spring and fall the cattle, which had roamed almost wild in the pastures, were “rounded up” by the cowboys, or vaqueros.  After the work of picking out each ranchero’s stock and branding the young cattle was over, the vaqueros thought it fine fun to lasso a bear,—­some old fellow, perhaps, who had been helping himself to the calves.  It is told that one big cinnamon bear, while quietly feeding on acorns, looked up to find three or four cow-boys on their ponies in a circle around him.  They spurred the trembling ponies as close to him as they