“The Brandt’s Cormorant is the common species wintering in Southern California. Like the California brown pelican and the surf ducks, only the juvenile birds are found in the bay close to the city of San Diego. As one rows about the harbor close to the shipping docks and by the old deserted fishermen’s huts along the slips, large numbers of Brandt’s Cormorants and pelicans can be seen perched on and almost covering the sunny sides of the roof tops. They sit in rows like sentinels with the head well down upon the shoulders, undisturbed by the noise of traffic and only by continued rapping on the building with an oar can they be induced to take to flight. They will usually circle for a short time in a lazy manner and then return to their old position. The older birds are rather more wary and usually feed a mile or so from the shore, in flocks of from three to ten. The loose kelp floating in the bay attracts the smaller fish. Such places form their feeding grounds. After they become gorged with fish, they fly to the rocks along the jetties and to the cross bars of the buoys, which mark the deep water channels. The birds are perfect gluttons, and as I lifted it into the boat there dropped from the gular sack of one specimen that I shot, over twenty small fish. The beautiful iridescence of the dark copper-green plumage of the adult Cormorant can only be appreciated when the freshly killed bird is seen.” Seth Mindwell. MATE, OR PARAGUAY TEA. It is a trite saying, but a very true one, that one-half the world does not know how the other half lives. This will apply to food and drink, as well as to other things, so widely do customs vary in different regions. While tea, coffee and chocolate, all products of warm climates, have come into general use as table drinks over the greater portion of the globe, so as to be universally known, there is a beverage of similar use, the favorite of millions, which is practically unknown to the world at large. Mate (two syllables) is the name of the prepared leaves of a shrub or tree belonging to the Rhamses family, and has the scientific name of Cassine gonhonha, but is more generally known as Ilex paraguayensis, as it was first used by the Indians of Paraguay. It belongs to the natural order of the holly, to which it bears much resemblance. Its leaves are six to eight inches long, short stalked, oblong, wedge-shaped, and finely toothed at the margin. The small white flowers are borne in clusters at the axils of the leaves. It bears a four-seeded berry, but the leaves are used for decoction, except for a very fine quality, which is made from the dried flower buds.