JOAQUIN MILLER.


The air was steeped in the warm fragrance of a California spring.
Every crease and wrinkle of the encircling hills was reflected in the
blue stillness of the laguna. Patches of poppies blazed like bonfires
on the mesa, and higher up the faint smoke of the blossoming buckthorn
tangled its drifts in the chaparral. Bees droned in the wild
buckwheat, and powdered themselves with the yellow of the mustard, and
now and then the clear, staccato voice of the meadow-lark broke into
the drowsy quiet--a swift little dagger of sound.

MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM,
in _Stories of the Foothills._



MAY 3.


THE SEA GARDENS AT CATALINA.

The voyager when the glass-bottom boat starts is first regaled with
the sandy beach, in three or four feet of water. He sees the wave
lines, the effect of waves on soft sand, the delicate shading of the
bottom in grays innumerable; now the collar-like egg of a univalve or
the sharp eye of a sole or halibut protruding from the sand. A school
of smelt dart by, pursued by a bass; and as the water deepens bands of
small fish, gleaming like silver, appear; then a black cormorant
dashing after them, or perchance a sea-lion browsing on the bottom in