GENERAL SUMMARY. 435 
might be converted into perennials by preventing them from 
going to seed. 
The abundance, excellence, and variety of our fruit aston 
ish the stranger, though he may have come from the markets 
of London or New York, which draw tribute from whole hem- 
ispheres. No 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 country 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 congenial clime. There are no 
worms in our apples; no curculios in our plums or cherries ; 
no Hessian fly or weevil in our wheat. The olive and the fig 
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 New 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. 
