FRUIT-GROWING IN CALIFORNIA. 



5 



more or less rain falls ; from fifty to seventy days that are 

 cloudy ; the rest bright and pleasant. These estimates will 

 vary with particular seasons ; but, taking the average of a 

 series of years, it will be found that, from October to April, one- 

 half of the days are cloudless, and fully three-fourths such that 

 any out-door vocation can be carried on without discomfort or 

 inconvenience. Cyclones and wind storms are wholly unknown, 

 and thunder is only heard at rare intervals, and then as a low 

 rumble forty miles away in the mountains. With the month of 

 March the rains are practically over, though showers are ex- 

 pected and hoped for in April. Between May 1 and 10 a slight 

 shower may not be unexpected, but it causes no particular 

 damage or inconvenience. By the first of July the surface mois- 

 ture is taken up and dissipated, and plant growth dependent on 

 this ceases. The grasses have ripened their seed, and, self- 

 cured and dried, are the nutritious food of cattle and sheep. 

 The fields of grain are yellow and ripe, and wait but the reaper. 

 Forest trees and shrubs have paused in their growth. This, to 

 the vegetable world, is the season of rest. This is the winter of 

 the Santa Clara Valley — winter, but strangely unlike winter 

 elsewhere, for here man has interposed. Here, by art and by 

 labour, he has reversed the processes of Nature and constrained 

 the courses of the seasons. In gardens bright with foliage and 

 resplendent with flowers there is spring in its freshness and 

 beauty, while, in orchards teeming with fruits, and in vineyards 

 purple with ripening grapes, summer and autumn vie for 

 supremacy. And so, with changing beauty and ceaseless 

 fruition, pass the seasons of this favoured clime." 



Concerning the topography of Santa Clara County, it may be 

 said that, while lying in about the same latitude as Italy and 

 Southern France, it has a climate all its own, and advantages 

 possessed by no other country. The valley was originally a lake 

 or river bed. As one has well written, " When the waters 

 receded they left a sedimentary deposit more fertile than that of 

 the valley of the Nile. To this deposit the succeeding centuries 

 have added the rich washings of the hills, combining such 

 mineral elements as are most conducive to plant growth and 

 production. The ancient lake-bed has been transformed into a 

 fertile plain that now produces a larger income than any other 

 territory of equal area on the face of the globe." 



