STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 417 



Now, Santa Barbara has no claim to that sort of praise. Its weather is 

 certainly not " admirably situated to the humors of mankind." They who 

 delight in snow, and ice, and sleet, with now and then a blizzard in winter, 

 and in hailstorms, thunderstorms, and cyclones in summer, cannot be 

 gratified. 



All, or nearly all, of the changes here, except the diurnal ones, come 

 slowly — so slowly as to be hardly perceived. Even the change from sum- 

 mer to winter is not striking, except that the former is rainless and the 

 •latter is not. 



WINTER AT SANTA BARBARA. 



Winter, for distinction, is called the "rainy season," but it is not, for all 

 that, a rainy season as many suppose, but only a season of rain. On an 

 average, there are probably fewer rainy days at Santa Barbara than in any 

 place east of the Alleghanies, during the same period; and as a general 

 rule, a great part of the rainfall takes place at night, and is immediately 

 followed by bright and pleasant days. The average annual rainfall is 

 about 17 inches, and is usually more or less irregularly distributed through- 

 out the season from October to May. But sometimes rain does occur on 

 eight to ten days in succession, making it, during that time at least, a real 

 rainy season, and giving the country half the rainfall of the year. Such 

 rains, however, are not common, and when they do occur, are generally 

 followed by long periods of bright, clear weather. 



THE SUMMER SEASON. 



It is a common opinion in the East that California is a hot place in sum- 

 mer, and so it is in certain parts, for there are deserts in it where the heat 

 is often intense; though even there it is by no means as oppressive as the 

 moist heat of the Atlantic Coast. But on the Pacific, and for many miles 

 inland, the temperature is so modified by the ocean as to be quite comfort- 

 able at all seasons, and most especially so in summer at Santa Barbara, 

 whose location is such that it is well protected from the strong sea breezes 

 that prevail at San Francisco, and at most other places along the coast. 



As a winter resort it is admitted by all who have tried it by a few months 

 residence, and who, by experience in other places, are qualified to judge, to 

 be unequaled. But if it is relatively so pleasant in winter, it is really far 

 more so in summer, when for months together the weather can be fully 

 relied upon never to interfere with anybody's plans. 



WRONG IMPRESSIONS. 



To convey to persons only familiar with the variable weather at the East, 

 a correct idea of our Santa Barbara climate, which is peculiar even in Cali- 

 fornia, is no easy matter. Ordinary tables of temperature generally fail to 

 do it. They are rarely read and still more rarely understood. Even the 

 President of the State Board of Health puts the average of the twelve hot- 

 test days here last year some 10° too high ; while the well known author of 

 "A Santa Barbara Holiday" gives us, unwittingly, a summer temperature 

 of New Orleans, and a winter one as warm as New York in August. 



There being then a seeming fallacy in figures, we will omit them and give 



instead the equivalent month and place in the East whose average this year 



corresponded with that of the different months at Santa Barbara. 

 2720 



