J\iaitJiciv Cooke. 29 



In 1884 Mr. Cooke became horticultural and entomological ed- 

 itor on the Record- Union. Over three hundred and fifty com- 

 munications have appeared in this paper, in the Pacific Rural 

 Press and other journals, from his pen. 



In 1880 the Record- Union remarked editorially : ' Mr. Cooke 

 is neither an agriculturist nor a scientific man ; yet he. has devel- 

 oped into a self-made naturalist, and he has already been enabled 

 to confer great and permanent benefit upon the fruit-growers of 

 California. * * * It is by such unselfish and persistent in- 

 quiry and experiment that the most important discoveries are of- 

 ten made, and such self-taught naturalists as Mr. Cooke have 

 frequently conferred more benefits upon their generation than 

 more fully equipped scientists.' 



Mr. Cooke enjoyed the confidence of leading entomologists > 

 Comstock, Riley, Dwindle and others, and of his official associ- 

 ates. He was a plain, genial and generous-hearted man, of heavy 

 frame and features. He was possessed of much native wit and 

 the most sociable spirit imaginable, but with enough firmness and 

 determination to conquer success in the face of apparently insur- 

 mountable obstacles. 



His name will be revered so long as the commonwealth of Cal- 

 ifornia exists. F. W . Goding. 



CLIMATE OF PACIFIC BEACH AND ITS EFFECTS. 



In the Chautauqua talks on the relations of weather to animal 

 and plant Hie, Charles Barnard observes, that plants which in 

 New England will not grow two feet high, will in California 

 climb over the tops of houses, and give thousands of flowers, 

 where,about Boston, they rarely produce two dozen in one sum- 

 mer. Now this difference in the growth of the plants in the two 

 climates and its exuberance in California is not due as might 

 be imagined to any such cause as that which produces the luxuri- 

 ant vegetation of the tropics — great heat and moisture combined 

 ■ — but to an equable temperature with an atmospheric humidity 

 that at times reaches as low a percentage as 5 per cent., and a 

 temperature medium that is constantly low, with cool nights and 

 the greatest possible amount of warm and bright sunshine whose 

 heat is tempered by continuous cool breezes. Rose trees and 

 grape vines have reached the greatest dimensions on the shores 

 of the sea. This beneficent eftect of the climate in stimulating a 

 healthy growth is not restricted to the vegetable kingdom, as the 

 animals of California attain to a larger growth much earlier than 

 they do in the Eastern or the Western States. In the horse, for in- 

 stance, a two-year-old attains to the size, strength and endurance 

 of a three-year-old of the States east of the Rockies; the wonder- 

 ful development, physique, endurance, and speed of the Cali- 

 fornia bred horse were revelations totally unexpected to the 

 habitues of the eastern racing courses, and the climatic results 



