xn 



BLOSSOM TIME IN THE ORCHARDS 



WITH the growth of a human population, it is 

 inevitable that the plants of the wind's way- 

 ward sowing shall be pushed farther and farther 

 afield and much wild beauty be buried by the plow 

 forever. As we look to-day from our car window 

 at the cultivated plains of the San Joaquin, given 

 over now to barley and alfalfa, peaches and grapes 

 and dairies, we sigh to think of that former day, 

 even yet remembered by old inhabitants, which John 

 Muir has nobly pictured for us in "The Mountains 

 of California." "The Great Central Plain," he 

 writes, "during the months of March, April and 

 May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey- 

 bloom. . . . Mints, gilias, nemophilas, castilleias 

 and innumerable compositae were so crowded to- 

 gether that, had ninety-nine per cent, of them been 

 taken away, the plain would still have seemed to 

 any but Californians extravagantly flowery. . . . 

 The air was sweet with fragrance, the larks sang 

 their blessed songs, rising on the wing as I ad- 



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