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194 the cocoa palms and breathed the fragrance of the orange and primavera blossoms at La Calera. Every flower gives its own distinct flavor to the honey gathered from it. The orange-flower honey of Orizaba is fit to grace the table of the gods. I wish I had a little of it now, with some nice warm biscuits, such as my mother used to make for me. This madroiio-flower honey ought to be delicious! I wonder if the bears of California have found out how good it is! The honey bee came to California with the Yankees, but the American variety soon found out that they could get along with next to nothing in the shape of a winter store, and so in a few years they took to loafing all summer, and shifting for themselves as best they might during the rainy season, leaving no margin for profit for their owners, who, after paying fabulous prices for them, were obliged to turn them adrift and import Italian bees to take their places. Singularly enough, the yellow rascals, as soon as they were independent, and under no obligation to work for anybody else, took to the mountains, and went to work with a will on their own hook. They have now spread through the whole State; and in some localities, as in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, bee-hunting, for their stores of delicious honey, has become a regular and profitable business.

If the California bears have not found out how good the honey is, the fact does no credit to their intelligence. In the valley of the Mississippi the bear is the wild bees'-most persistent enemy. But