State Agricultural Society. 247 



All that portion of the State lying north of the northern terminus of 

 the Sacramento Valley, at which point the two ranges of mountains 

 unite, is called Northern California, and contains the Counties of Hum- 

 boldt, Del Norte, Siskiyou, Shasta, and Lassen, which together comprise 

 about ten million acres, cut up into rugged peaks and mountain ridges 

 and deep gorges and beautiful valleys. This is the best watered and 

 the best timbered section of the State. It has a double system of rivers — 

 one converging to the south and uniting in the formation of the Sacra- 

 mento River, and the other emptying into the Humboldt Bay and the 

 Pacific Ocean. 



CLIMATE. 



Having sketched a very general outline of the geography and topog- 

 raphy of the State, we are prepared to explain to some extent the mys- 

 tery of our uniformly mild but ever varying climates. We use the term 

 climates, for the reason that not only does each section of the State, 

 whether divided by nature into the central valley, with the Coast Range 

 and Sierra Nevada Mountains on either side, or by imaginary lines, into 

 Northern, Central, and Southern California, have a climate of its own, 

 but each portion of the great central valley, and each lesser valley, 

 whether in the Sierra Nevada Mountains or on either eastern or western 

 slope of the Coast Mountains, has a climate peculiar to itself, each de- 

 pending on the direction of the prevailing winds and its exposure to or 

 protection from the same — as well as its exposure to or protection from 

 the rays of the sun. 



There are in our State two great natural climatic forces or causes, and 

 each is in a perpetual struggle for the ascendancy over the other. These 

 forces are the exterior and interior, or ocean and land forces. 



The waters of the Pacific Ocean, washing the coast the entire length 

 of the State, preserve an even temperature the year round, never vary- 

 ing but about two degrees — from fifty-two degrees to fifty-four degrees. 

 The tendency of the land force, on the contrary, is to produce extremely 

 cold weather in the Winter and extremely hot weather in the Summer. 



SUMMER CLIMATE. 



The direct rays of a vertical sun during the long days o^Summer heat 

 up the earth and the air to such an extent that but for the presence of 

 the ocean and its cooling forces, the whole interior would become like 

 an oven, too hot for the comfortable existence of human beings. The 

 local atmosphere thus becomes rarified and dries and rises from the 

 earth, thus tending to create a vacuum. At this same time the cold 

 Arctic waters of the ocean come sweeping down in constant currents 

 from the northwest along our coast, bringing with them cold currents of 

 damp, heavy, and foggy winds, which, pressing against the outer wall 

 of the Coast Range, rise and burst over at every depression and roll 

 down through the adjacent valleys, by degrees slacking their velocity 

 and force as they advance, and by degrees intermingling with and losing 

 themselves and their dampening and cooling influence in the dry, warm 

 atmosphere of each locality. As the Golden Gate, or entrance to the 

 Bay of San Francisco, presents no barrier to the ingress of these winds, 

 they come rushing in through this opening in great volume, and with a 

 velocity and force proportionate to the heat of the interior. Striking 

 the Mount Diablo range of mountains, which lie at the junction of the 



