This gray wolf is a savage creature and hides in the thick forests by day, slinking out at night to the nearest sheep corral or turkey-pen if he can find one unwatched by some faithful dog.  His friend and neighbor, the fox, likes fat geese and chickens as well as birds, squirrels, and wood-rats.  The queer raccoon lives in the redwoods and is often caught and kept in a cage or chained for a pet.

Wildcats, both gray and yellow, are found in the thickly timbered parts of California, and the badger makes his home in the mountain canons or pine woods.  There, too, the curious porcupine dwells.  He is covered with grayish white quills, which bristle out when he is angry or frightened.  No old dog will touch this animal, for he knows better than to get a mouthful of sharp toothpicks by biting Mr. Porcupine, who is like a round pincushion with the pins pointing out.  A dog who has never seen this prickly ball will dab at it, and have a sore paw to nurse for weeks after.

Two or three kinds of tree-squirrels live in the pines and redwoods, the Douglas squirrel being well known in the mountains.  The ground squirrel, or chipmunk, digs holes in the ground, where he hides his winter’s store of grain and nuts.

Three of our smaller wild animals are very common and very troublesome to the farmer.  The skunk, which looks like a pretty black and white kitten with a bushy tail, and also the weasel, destroy all the chickens and eggs they can reach, and they are so cunning that it is hard to keep them out of the hen-house.  That little pest, the gopher, we are all well acquainted with, since he gnaws the pinks and roses off at their roots in your city garden while his large family of brothers and sisters kill the farmer’s fruit-trees and vines.  The gopher digs long tunnels under ground, making storerooms here and there in these passages, which he fills with grass, roots, and seeds.  In each cheek he has a pouch, or pocket, large enough to hold nearly a handful of grain, so the little rascal carries his stores very easily.  The traps and poison by which the farmer is always trying to make way with him, he is sly enough to let alone.  His greatest foe is the cat, which watches patiently at the hole where the destructive little fellow is digging and usually catches him.  A mother cat will sometimes bring in two or three gophers a day to her kittens.

IN SALT WATER AND FRESH

Tom and Retta Ransom were two of the happiest children in the state, I believe, when told that their summer vacation was to be spent at Catalina Island.  To see the wonderful fish that swim in those warm, Southern waters, to watch them through the glass-bottomed boat, to dip out funny sea-flowers with a net, or catch the pretty kingfish and perhaps a “yellowtail,”—­why, they could talk of nothing else!