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THE CLIMATE OF CALIFORNIA. 



The Society was furnished the following able and interesting paper, 

 by the Hon. B. B. Redding, on the climate of California, being a 

 scientific examination of the subject, and conclusions drawn from 

 twenty-five years' observation : 



The temperature of the air, course of the wind, rain, and snowfall, 

 are taken daily at seven a. m., two p. m., and nine p. m., at eighty- 

 three stations of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads 

 and their branches, extending from San Francisco to Ogden, Lathrop 

 to Fort Yuma, San Francisco to Soledad, Sacramento to Redding, 

 Sacramento to Williams, and Vallejo to Calistoga and Petaluma. 

 The temperature of the water is also taken at several points, includ- 

 ing five stations on the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. In 

 addition to the observations made by the United States Signal Ser- 

 vice, the Coast Survey, and those made at all the military posts, w r e 

 thus have three daily observations recorded at eighty-three stations 

 on the Pacific Coast, extending through eight degrees of latitude and 

 twelve degrees of longitude. These have been kept for the use of the 

 companies and for the benefit of the people residing in the vicinity 

 of the various stations. As each new station is reached in the con- 

 struction of a railroad, the agent is supplied with proper instruments 

 and the record required to be kept. On all the roads first constructed, 

 the record has been kept for more than ten years. On the new road 

 over the Colorado Desert, from the San Bernardino Mountains to 

 Fort Yuma, of course the record is only for the past year. The record 

 of these three daily observations for even fifty stations for ten years, 

 makes an army of figures that it is almost appalling to attack; yet, 

 when reduced, and the mean obtained, the results are of great import- 

 ance, not only to the farmer, but to every citizen. As an illustration 

 of the financial importance of these records that came within my 

 personal observation : In eighteen hundred and sixty-nine some 

 gentlemen made an investment of nearly fifty thousand dollars, near 

 Summit Station, in the construction of sheds over some lakes, under 

 which to cut ice for the San Francisco market; they found it impos- 

 sible to erect any w r ooden structure sufficiently wide for their pur- 

 pose, that would bear the weight of snow that annually falls at that 

 point. Their structures are in ruins, and every dollar put into the 

 enterprise (other than it gave a small army of men employment in 

 the erection of their buildings) is lost. Could the gentlemen have 

 consulted these records, they would have seen that the annual aver- 

 age rainfall at this point is more than five feet. Nearly all of this 

 falls in the form of snow, and is equal — if the snow that falls did not 

 become compact or melt — to a bank of snow on their lakes and the 

 roofs of their buildings each winter of sixty feet in depth. If the 

 farmers who have made settlements on the west side of the San Joa- 

 quin River, and have tried unsuccessfully for years to raise crops 

 upon them without artificial irrigation, could have seen the results 

 in the hard unyielding facts these figures disclose, they would know 



