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.” 
