280 The National Geographic Magazine 



Courtesy of the Scientific American Supplement 



A Colossal California!! Pumpkin 



that a similar fish is caught in the Gulf 

 of California weighing two hundred 

 pounds. In the Italian quarter of this 

 city will be seen the octopus, or devil- 

 fish, hung up for sale, a terrible array 

 of arms or tentacles; not the little crea- 

 ture a foot or two across common in the 

 East, but a veritable monster with a 

 radial spread of perhaps twelve or four- 

 teen feet. Along the upper coast these 

 animals have been found with a radial 

 spread of twenty-five feet — well named 

 the spider of the sea. Along the coast 

 will be seen a bass which often tips the 

 scales at five hundred pounds; and at 

 Monterey has been taken a mackerel 

 weighing nine hundred pounds — sug- 

 gestive that even fishes grow large in 



western waters. In Alaskan 

 waters is found a monster clam, 

 the "geoduck," one of which 

 would afford a meal for several 

 persons; not so large however 

 as the great tridacna and its 

 species, which weighs, with 

 its two valves, five hundred 

 pounds, the animal alone 

 weighing thirty. This shell, 

 though common in California, 

 is from the equatorial regions 

 of the Pacific, where, buried in 

 the soft rock, its viselike jaws 

 partly open, it is a menace to 

 the natives who wade along the 

 reefs searching for shells. 



In southern California the 

 vegetation is often remarkable 

 for its size. At Santa Barbara 

 is a grapevine which covers 

 several hundred square feet, 

 the vine itself resembling a 

 tree, said to be the largest 

 vine in the world, though this 

 is open to doubt, for some of 

 the old vines of Spain are of 

 enormous size. Whether it is 

 due to the newness of the soil 

 and the fact that it is not yet 

 exhausted by successive farm- 

 ing is not known, but nearly 

 everything here grows very large and 

 rapidly. The tree known as the Aus- 

 tralian black wattle will attain a height 

 of fifty or more feet in five years, palms 

 the same height in less than twenty 

 years, and eucalyptus one hundred feet 

 in less time ; so that it is a common 

 saying in southern California that bar- 

 ren ground can be taken and made to 

 look like a place fifty years old in five 

 years. The extraordinary growth of 

 flowering plants and shrubs in south- 

 ern California is noticed. The eastern 

 heliotrope grows in the form of a vine 

 reaching twenty feet upward, cover- 

 ing the fronts of houses, in some way 

 resisting the frost if at all protected 

 by overhanging roof. In the city of 



