18 DROUGHT RESISTANCE OF OLIVE IN SOUTHWESTERN STATES. 



a series of extremely dry years it has happened that the flow of 9 or 

 10 miner's inches, or about 120 gaUons, per minute from the hot 

 spring pool has been all there was to sustain plant or animal life for 

 months at a time. 



A little way out on the desert one notices rows of pepper trees 

 (Schiniis moUe), their rich, dark green in sharp contrast with the 

 desert herbs and shrubs, while a nearer approach shows, perhaps, a 

 half-dismantled house and a broken fence inclosing a small field. 

 Gaunt rows of cottonwood trees, a few still keeping up the struggle, 

 the greater part standing stiff and white, seem ghostlike sentinels 

 keeping watch along the line of a ditch that has long since ceased to 

 convey the life-giving water. Acres of grapevine stumps, blocks of 

 dead a})ricot trees, skeleton branches of bleaching fig trees, a few 

 green sprouts struggling from their bases — all give eloquent testimony 

 to the energy and capital invested in the Palmdale settlement in 1889, 

 when the granite-lined canal brought a supply of water from the 

 Whitewater River across 7 miles of blowing sand to irrigate this 

 sheltered spot at the foot of the San Jacinto Range.^ 



In striking contrast to the impression of desolation offered by the 

 majority of these abandoned fields is that of a tract lying a mile 

 northeast of Palm Springs, Cal.,'' where, if one ascends to a little 

 elevation above the plain, the check rows in dark, rich green of an 

 olive plantation of 26 acres shows in striking contrast to the brownish 

 green of the creosote bush (Covillea tridenta), which forms the natural 

 growth. Here in 1891 was set an olive grove of approximately 3,000 

 trees, together with some 6 or 7 acres of figs. (See PI. Ill, fig. 1.) 



CLIMATE OF PALM SPRINGS. 



Palm Springs has the typical desert climate, modified somewhat 

 by its proximity to the San Jacinto Range, which cuts off the fierce 

 sweep of the winds which come down through the San Gorgonio Pass 

 and spread out over the country above the Salton Sea. The summer's 

 heat is intense and prolonged, maximum temperatures of 100° F. and 

 over being leached every month from May to September, inclusive, 

 and occasionally even in April and October. The absolute yearly 

 maximum for the ten years from 1897 to 1906, inclusive, ranges from 

 1 13° to 122° F., only 1904 failing to reach 1 16° F. The lowest recorded 

 winter temperature is 28°, but more often 32° F. is the record, and 

 sometimes winters ])ass with scarcely a trace of frost. Although 

 within 12 miles of the snow-capped San Jacinto peaks, the mean 



a Since the studies herein described were made, much of the canal stock and a con- 

 siderable acreage of land have been acquired by persons who have repaired the canal 

 and begun again the approi)riation of water from the Whitewater River. 



b A portion of section 11, in township 4 south, range 4 east. 

 192 



