GENERAL SUMMART. 435 



might be converted into perennials by preventing them from 

 going to seed. 



The abundance, excellence, and variety of our fruit aston 

 ish the stranorer, thousrh he may have come from the markets 

 of London or New York, which draw tribute from whole hem- 

 ispheres. Xo market on the globe surpasses ours in variety, 

 and yet it is not ten years since we began to import fruit-trees 

 direct from the Eastern states and Europe. Our mild winters 

 permit the trees to grow during nine or ten months in the 

 year, and they grow more rapidly, and reach maturity more 

 speedily, than in any other eountry where they are so healthy, 

 and bear so abundantly. The pear and apple trees which were 

 planted by the missionaries thirty or forty years ago, are still 

 in perfect health, and some of them produce as much as a ton 

 of fruit to the tree every year. The apple and pear seem to 

 have found here their most cons^enial clime. There are no 

 worms in our apples ; no curculios in our plums or cherries ; 

 no Hessian flv or weevil in our wheat. The olive and the fiar 

 grow luxuriantly beside the apple and the pear. We can pro- 

 duce olives better than any of the olive-producing regions of 

 the Mediterranean, because we have none of those storms of 

 thunder and hail and rain, which frequently destroy the crops 

 in southern Europe and Asia Minor. The vine produces more 

 abundantly than in any part of Europe, and the crop has never 

 failed or been destroyed here, as often happens there. A yield 

 of one thousand gallons of wine to the acre is as frequent, pro- 

 portionately, in California, as of four hundred in France or Ger- 

 many. Our gardens are, in time, to be the most beautiful in 

 the world, resplendent with conifers and deciduous trees, with 

 the flowers of the temperate zone, and the luxuriant plants of 

 the tropics. The shrubs which in Xew York remain small, 

 and live only under shelter, as delicate exotics, are natu- 

 ralized in San Francisco, grow almost to tree-like size, remain 

 green throughout the year, and bloom during most of the 

 months. The rosebush is covered with flowers from January 

 to December. 



