PALESTINE FRUITS IN CALIFORNIA 

 GARDENS 



OOUTHERX California, particularly on its rural side, has 

 ^ numerous features that remind the visitor of Palestine, 

 and as one travels the sunny highways and byways of the state, 

 he sees in field and garden many a fruit unknown to cultivation 

 on the eastern side of our continent, though familiar enough 

 through the reading of Scripture. 



After the winter rains have brought out the verdure upon 

 the soft, round hills, we like to hitch up the family horse for a 

 jog among the ranches that lie in the luidulations of the foot- 

 hills on the outskirts of our little city. The meadow larks make 

 music from every fence post ; there is the exquisite fragrance 

 of early orange blossoms in the air ; bees are droning in the 

 warm sunshine and plundering the sunflowers, which here in 

 southern California bloom winter and summer. Far away 

 among the hills, already white with the bloom of the wild lilac, 

 the quail is calling to his mate; and plowmen with teams of six 

 or eight horses are turning up the soil for the barley-sowing. 



That glowing hillside just ahead of us owes its color to the 

 bare, ruddy twigs of an orchard of apricots, a tree very com- 

 mon in California and believed by many scholars to be the apple 

 of Proverbs and Solomon's Song. Topping the hill we descend 

 into a little valley where, though it is still January, an orchard 

 is in full bloom — a dainty cloud of pink and white resting 

 lightly upon leafless branches. This is the almond, so fre- 

 quently mentioned in the Old Testament, of whose wood the 

 budding rod of Aaron was made. It is the earliest of fruit 



