STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 203 



There was another field left open, another useful office to be filled, and, 

 without waiting for a convention to nominate him, Colonel Haraszthy 

 assumed its delicate and costly functions by setting for himself the task of 

 proving that California can produce champagne. It took better stuff than 

 we put into office-holders to invest the substance and the energy he gave 

 to the maze of experiments, out of which issued a California sparkling 

 wine. Champagne has in it the soul of the wine, the sparkling, speaking 

 spirit. Until this other great Californian conjured this spirit from his 

 cuvee the vineyards of this State were so many bodies only. He touched 

 them with the hand of genius, and each body was quickened by the soul 

 within it. In this contact and conversation with Nature, by which these 

 really great men are planting firmer foundations for California than could 

 be built by all the bones mortared together by the brains of her noisy poli- 

 ticians, there are many co-workers. 



In a sunny little valley, on the bayward side of the Berkeley hills, another 

 great Californian has established a horticultural laboratory, wherein the fruits 

 of Japan are undergoing test and trial, and experiments in hybridizing are 

 in progress that are big with importance to our stone fruit interest. There 

 Pyral, of Temescal, has built the tiny bowers in which the marriage of 

 blossoms has been consummated, and he has watched lest a vagrant bee 

 should steal and sip the wedding sweets, or a wandering breeze pollute the 

 bride, and so defeat his well planned match-making. The layman, look- 

 ing, may be indifferent to this patient toil which, bringing together the 

 germinal principle of two different fruits in the blossom, produces a new 

 fruit with the flavor and excellence of both parents; but let it be remem- 

 bered that to hybridizing we owe our delicate nectarine, and it was the 

 same process that differentiated the peach and apricot from some common 

 ancestry so remote as to be forgotten. Kings, queens, and emperors schemed, 

 and fought, and died about the Spanish marriage in the time of Louis XIV, 

 but what was that marriage, with all its dynastic consequences, compared 

 with the results which may follow this marriage of flowers by this patient, 

 plodding man, whose unspoken ceremony may give the world a new fruit 

 and industry a new creation by which to increase the profits of its toil ? 



There are others within our borders who rank with them as benefactors 

 of mankind by having added to the mastery of the resources of nature, and 

 yet when they come and go, we burn no torch and belch no brass music in 

 their honor. Receptions, and levees, and leavetakings are for others, while 

 our real benefactors pay their own fare, carry their own satchels, and are 

 not pointed out in the crowd to the gaze of admiration, or curiosity, or 

 envy. 



What has been wrought here by men of whom these are the type, has 

 been simply the result of faith that Nature had hidden in the soil and sun- 

 shine of California rare and novel capacities not found grouped together in 

 any other land on earth. Emerson never visited California, but he described 

 our commonwealth in the exordium of one of his remarkable addresses in 

 these terms: "In this refulgent summer it has been a luxury to draw the 

 breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted 

 with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet 

 with the breath of the pine, the balm of gilead, and the new hay. Night 

 brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the trans- 

 parent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under 

 them seems a young child and this huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes 

 the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. 

 The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn and 

 the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken 



