Climate of Southern California 373 



line odors from the sea into the great valleys by day, and 

 the aroma of pine and fir by night. Up to August 2oth 

 there may be no disagreeable warm or hot days, and 

 when it is warm it seems warmer than it really is. At 

 one point, seven hundred feet above the sea, fourteen 

 miles from it, the thermometer reached 100 but twenty- 

 three times in five years, and the showing at Los An- 

 geles is even more remarkable. 



When days of excessive heat come, the wind is from 

 the desert and it is dry, not dangerous ; and during it 

 the death rate of a large city like Los Angeles, with over 

 two hundred thousand inhabitants, will not veer from 

 normal, while a hot " wave " in the East will strike down 

 hundreds, children and adults. This refers to the in- 

 terior towns twenty or thirty miles from the sea, as 

 Pasadena. Those nearer the desert are much hotter, 

 but in all these places the nights are cool, and on the 

 hottest days the man who stands under a tree will soon 

 move into the sun to " cool off." In a word, in the East 

 and South the air becomes heated and the interior of a 

 house is nearly as warm as out of doors, but in South- 

 ern California summers the normal air remains cool ; it 

 is constantly coming from the sea and does not be- 

 come heated in the Eastern sense ; hence those who un- 

 derstand the country open up their houses early in 

 the morning on very warm days, allow the clear 

 night air to percolate through them, and at nine 

 o'clock close the house, shutting out the heat, keeping 

 the temperature at 70 or below 75 until three or four 



