246 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



vanced, then sinking out of sight in the polleny sod ; 

 while myriads of wild bees stirred the lower air 

 with their monotonous hum monotonous, yet for- 

 ever fresh and sweet as everyday sunshine/' 



Yet man's spoliation of the kingdom of the wild is 

 not all unattended by beauty. Beauty is an immor- 

 tal goddess; vanishing here, she reappears there; 

 and nowhere is she more sure of being found than 

 in gardens and in orchards. If California has lost 

 some of the aboriginal loveliness that clothed her 

 fertile valleys before the white occupation, she has 

 but put on another charm in her cultivated areas, 

 soberer but still very appealing. No sight in the 

 State is more entrancing than the annual bloom- 

 ing of the orchards, which is made the more effective 

 by the custom of the orchardists to specialize in 

 different districts. In the valleys of the south, for 

 instance, are mile upon mile of citrus-fruit trees; 

 in the San Joaquin is the stronghold of the peach 

 and the nectarine; the Sacramento Valley is the 

 principal home of the pear; in the Pajaro Valley, 

 apple is king; the prune and the apricot share the 

 throne in Santa Clara County. The result is the 

 beauty of the single peach or plum or pear which 

 everybody knows the world over and makes much 

 of in a spring ramble, multiplied literally by mil- 

 lions an ocean of one kind of blossoms spread over 



