Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/730

658 violets are almost trees. Nothing but rampant grasses and sedges in the meadows, a few coarse, weedy flowers on the roadside, a wealth of vegetation in the canals, and everything else bushes and trees. No delicate plant hugs the ground for warmth, but all shoot upward, only requiring the heavy rains to enable them to rise higher and higher.



URING the past summer several attempts were made to thoroughly investigate the shell heaps, kitchen middens, and graves of the islands of Santa Catalina and San Clemente, off the coast of southern California. One of these parties, organized by Mr. J. Neale Plumb, of New York, in the short time at their command made some interesting finds.

The two islands are respectively twenty-two and forty miles off shore, each about twenty-two miles in length. Santa Catalina is



a mountain range, with peaks twenty-five hundred or three thousand feet in height, with a climate that makes it a most desirable spot the year round, as the summer is delightful and in winter the island is a garden in the sea. San Clemente rises to a height of one thousand or twelve hundred feet at places, but is flat on top, as though swept by the winds.