FREEDOM OF CALIFORNIA FROM POISONOUS ANIMALS AND INSECTS.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3118, 14 February 1879, Page 4

FREEDOM OF CALIFORNIA FROM POISONOUS ANIMALS AND INSECTS.

We do not think attention has ever been called to the fact that there is not a state in the Union or country in the world, of like sice and possessing such a variety of climate aa California, which is so free from dangerous wild animals, poisonous reptiles, insects and plants as this state. We hare rattlesnakes and grizzly bears, animals and reptiles, and woodticks and poison oak among insects and plants; but of these only the two latter are really annoying, while neither is really dangerous. Sheep herders and hunters and mountaineers like John Muir, hare tramped over the state and slept in the open air for twenty years or more, without ever once being injured by a wild animal or reptile, or without even being poisoned by poison- oak, or having their flesh made a burrowing place of by woodticks." Sir Jeseph Hooker, the eminent English botanist, was on a botanical tour in California last year, in company •with Profesßor Gray, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, during which he camped out for some time. He testified that he had never been in a country in his life where there were so few drawbacks to outdoor life from the causes recited as in California. Sir Joseph Hooker's testimony in this matter iwaaiworth something, for he has been a botanizing wanderer over the greater portion 6T> the world. His opinion was similar to that of John Muir. Mr Muir has walked over all of the Southern and many of the Western Atlantic States, and also over a large portion of Canada, studying botany and geology.' He has spent seventeen years oh foot in this state, engaged in those and kindred studies of natural science, and he stated to us recently that California was by far the most delightful country he had ever been in for a wandering life in the open air.— Heal Estate Circular.