248 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



fumed blossoms while yet the golden spheres of 

 fruit are thick upon them, or to saunter through a 

 grove when the petals are dropping and lodging in 

 your hair and on your shoulders and whitening all 

 the earth about you that is to feel yourself set 

 down in the orchard of the Hesperides, and the 

 Greek fable does not seem much of a myth after 

 all. It is a month or more from the time the blos- 

 soms begin to open until the last have fallen, and 

 all that time the groves are a succession of mam- 

 moth bouquets of fragrance making delight for all 

 who visit the orange-growing districts. Then, there 

 are the lemon groves, equally fragrant, but the 

 lemon, unlike the orange, which flowers only once 

 in a twelvemonth, distributes its bloom more or less 

 throughout the year. The culture of the orange 

 used to be confined practically to Southern Cali- 

 fornia, but it is being pushed farther and farther 

 north in the interior valleys of the State, and it is 

 now grown from San Diego to the upper Sacra- 

 mento, though the south is still the undisputed cen- 

 ter of the industry. Curiously enough the fruit 

 ripens fully a month earlier in the north than in 

 the south, because of the greater summer heat of 

 the northern inland valleys, which are shut off by the 

 Coast mountains from the tempering influence of 

 the sea. 



