122 FRANCIS E. LLOYD 



sunshine, although on exceptional days there may be an occasional 

 short period scarcely longer than a half-hour, generally less. 

 Such days may be described as fog days. These may be "low- 

 fog" days, or "high-fog" days (to use local terms), Carmel 

 lying directly on the coast and usually overshadowed by the 

 ocean fog-bank, the edge of which reaches a short distance 

 inland. These days, on which one sees the sunlit hills one to 

 three miles distant, constitute about 70% of the whole time, and 

 furnish the dominant climatic conditions. Of direct sunlight, 

 there were during the ten weeks about seventy-five hours, about 

 9% of the total possible sunshine hours, calling these 12 per day. 

 The distribution of the sunshine hours is also indicated in the 

 table. Of the seventy days, only five (with six hours or more of 

 sunshine) or at most eight (including those with five hours of 

 sunshine) could be called sunshiny. 



The humidity is usually rather high. On two fog-days, the 

 wet and dry bulb readings were 57° and 63°, and 59° and 66°, 

 or indicating relative humidities of 69% and 66% ; on two days of 

 continuous sunshine 62° and 70°, and 63.5° and 74°, indicating 

 relative humidities of 64% and 56%, at the minimal points. At 

 night the temperatures are uniformly low and the dew point is 

 usually reached. There is no rain, though the condensation 

 of moisture on the pine trees during the night is often sufficient 

 to wet the whole surface of the ground beneath. An occasional 

 "weeping fog," enough merely to wet the soil surface, might 

 by the unaccustomed visitor be regarded as rain. 



The climate is ideal for many plants, as the luxuriant growth 

 of geraniums, fuchsias, foxgloves and the like shows. It is 

 such cool and humid conditions w^hich make possible along the 

 California coastal belt the growing of beans and many other 

 vegetables to remarkable perfection. But introduced species 

 show a various behavior toward such conditions, as the work at 

 the Coastal Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Wash- 

 ington is showing. Of these species, Phytolacca decandra, in 

 its above mentioned idiosyncracy, is a striking example. 



During five years of observation in the experimental garden 

 no instance of seed development has been found to occur under 



