Transactions at the Annual Meeting. 123 



sufficient for almost continuous growth, often scald the exotic 

 plants we try to rear, and so limit our old varieties of vegetables 

 on the farm, in the garden and flower bed, but impart to some 

 others and to strangers a magnificence unknown, even in the 

 Northern greenhouse. From this cause the winter garden comes. 

 The summer sun pours its rays almost vertically, and requires a 

 hat whose brim is broad as the Mexican /Sombrero, or the 

 Chinese bamboo umbrella. This gives life and strength to the 

 banana, pineapple, yam and sweet potato, and perfects fruits like 

 the sugar and other custard apples, guavas, mangoes, sapoddlas, 

 and all the citric tribes, ripening these last, and especially the 

 orange, as it ripens nowhere else. Here one listens to the winds 

 soughing through the tops of the "long-strawed " pines, and 

 asks whence they come and whither they go. The answer is 

 unmistakable in terms, like this: "We belong neither to the 

 great whirl of the north, which sweeps over the plains of Man- 

 itoba and freezes the great lakes; nor to the hot currents that 

 sweep and whirl along the base of the rocky ranges and over the 

 plains where grasshoppers luxuriate, and in Iowa and Wisconsin 

 scorch the leaves like a sirocco, and at other times tear fences and 

 buildings from their foundations, uproot trees and devastate 

 farms; nor do we come from that other parabolic whirl which 

 creates the gulf stream and so often engulfs navies in tornadoes ; 

 but we hold the neutral ground between them all, not unlike the 

 little republic of Switzerland, bending before the one and the 

 other, yet holding the position.'' To drop metaphor, along the 

 west coast of this peninsula is a tract of sea and land nearly two 

 hundred miles in diameter, having this county as its center, over 

 which tornadoes never roll and frosts seldom fall to injure the 

 most tender plants. Though we promptly receive from every 

 side a climati-graph of heat and cold, winds and storms, a thous- 

 and miles distant, yet it comes modified in all respects till only 

 close observers see the sign. The cold winds reach us over sea o 

 gulf, warmed from their bosoms. The heat is always moderated 

 by constant breezes, and the shade of tree or house is always 

 pleasant. The thermometer ranges between freezing and blood 

 heat, with an average of 73° Fahrenheit, seldom touching the 



