. Strange to say, he never seems to get
himself smeared with gum, not even his paws or whiskers--and how cleanly
and beautiful in color the cone-litter kitchen-middens he makes.

We are now approaching the region of clouds and cool streams.
Magnificent white cumuli appeared about noon above the Yosemite
region,--floating fountains refreshing the glorious wilderness,--sky
mountains in whose pearly hills and dales the streams take their
rise,--blessing with cooling shadows and rain. No rock landscape is more
varied in sculpture, none more delicately modeled than these landscapes
of the sky; domes and peaks rising, swelling, white as finest marble
and firmly outlined, a most impressive manifestation of world building.
Every rain-cloud, however fleeting, leaves its mark, not only on trees
and flowers whose pulses are quickened, and on the replenished streams
and lakes, but also on the rocks are its marks engraved whether we can
see them or not.

I have been examining the curious and influential shrub _Adenostoma
fasciculata_, first noticed about Horseshoe Bend. It is very abundant on
the lower slopes of the second plateau near Coulterville, forming a
dense, almost impenetrable growth that looks dark in the distance. It
belongs to the rose family, is about six or eight feet high, has small
white flowers in racemes eight to twelve inches long, round needle-like
leaves, and reddish bark that becomes shreddy when old. It grows on
sun-beaten slopes, and like grass is often swept away by running fires,
but is quickly renewed from the roots. Any trees that may have
established themselves in its midst are at length killed by these fires,
and this no doubt is the secret of the unbroken character of its broad
belts. A few manzanitas, which also rise again from the root after
consuming fires, make out to dwell with it, also a few bush
compositae--baccharis and linosyris, and some liliaceous plants, mostly
calochortus and brodiaea, with deepset bulbs safe from fire. A multitude
of birds and "wee, sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beasties" find good homes
in its deepest thickets, and the open bays and lanes that fringe the
margins of its main belts offer shelter and food to the deer when winter
storms drive them down from their high mountain pastures. A most
admirable plant! It is now in bloom, and I like to wear its pretty
fragrant racemes in my buttonhole.

_Azalea occidentalis_, another charming shrub, grows beside cool streams
hereabo