242 STATE HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



under cultivation to prevent any running of prairie fires. Conse- 

 quently, instead of a blackened surface, absorbing the sun's heat and 

 tempering the " northwester," the winter surface of the vrind's course 

 is light grey, the color of dead grass absorbing very little of the sun's 

 heat, and consequently exerting little mollifying influence on the se- 

 verity of the cold. If this be the true cause, what is the outlook for 

 the future "? Is there any agency at work which will so temper these 

 blizzards as to keep the cold down to a point where we can generally 

 have a peach crop I Of course, there will never again be prairie fires 

 and a blackened surface for the northwest wind-storms to traverse. 

 The only hope I can see is that the growth of timber and orchards over 

 the area traversed will form such a wind-break that the velocity of the 

 storm will be so checked that the wind will have lost much of its cold 

 by the time it reaches us, and the cold will not often reach a suflQcient 

 intensity to destroy the crop. Anyone who has on an ocean beach 

 noticed the effect a low beach grass has of killing the force of the wind 

 blowing shoreward, may hope with some confidence that the time may 

 come when we shall be sheltered from the worst effects of the " bliz- 

 zard" by reason of the increase of forests and orchards in the region 

 traversed, even though it be in the winter when the trees are denuded 

 of leaves and offer least resistance. Homer Reed, 



Kansas City, Mo. 



LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA. 



Florence, Cal., Oct. 2, 1892. 

 Ed. Journal, Weston, Mo. : 



So many of my kind friends have requested me to give my opinion 

 of the "Golden State," that I feel I can no longer slight their wishes. 

 To be able to give a true view after so short a sojourn is almost an 

 impossibility, hence my reluctance to say anything at all. 



Neither would I wish to take the California rose-colored view, and 

 quote statistics and prices which will apply in one case and fail in a 

 hundred others. 



To eastern visitors the climate is the all-prevailing theme. Now 

 the seasons are divided into two classes — winter and summer. The 

 former is the kind nine-tenths of the visitors see. After the rains 

 everything will seem green and beautiful to the eyes just from the leaf- 

 less trees and snows of the noith. On the subject of climate you 

 never find a Californian asleep. Inquiring of a lady a few days ago as 

 to how cold it ever got here, she replied G7 degrees was the usual tern- 



