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ALMONDS AND RAISIN GRAPES, RANCHO CHICO. (GENERAL JOHN BIDWELL'S.)

slow growth, and there are many finer blooming species; but none of the desert plants suit their environment better. Some of these days, when only a few are left, those few will be as famous as the dragon-trees of the Canaries.

So much for a few of the picturesque species of native plants of California. But, as outlined in the opening paragraphs of this article, the horticulturist has a claim upon this subject. The fruits and flowers that he plants vary more rapidly here than elsewhere; so he produces new and valuable varieties. California has become the paradise of the rosarian, the seedgrower, the hybridizer, and the nurseryman. The wild grape is used as a stock for wine and raisin grapes, and, in some cases that I know of, men have grafted Italian chestnuts upon one species of the native oaks. All the hillsides of the tree region, when not too steep to plow, nor too far above the sea-level, will grow the fruits and varied horticultural products of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and southern France. The pomegranate is a garden shrub in many districts, and the almond is a roadside tree. The drooping, acacia-like leaves of the scarlet

fruited pepper-tree grow with magnolias, palms, and cedars of Lebanon. Oranges and lemons stand in many an orchard with apples and peaches. Among the notable plants of the State are many adopted species, such as the acacias and eucalyptuses of Australia, and the bamboos and persimmons of Japan.

When Americans came to California, they were surprised at the variations that they observed in familiar plants. The elderberry, which is only slightly different from the elderberrybush of the Atlantic slope, often becomes a tree of from two to four feet in diameter and thirty or forty feet high. This is merely a matter of local environment, rich soil, and shelter; the same species is a mere shrub on the rocky hillsides of the Coast Range. The bronzeleaved Ricinus, which makes a semi-tropic summer garden in front of many an Atlantic coast cottage, grows for year after year in California, until a section of its stem a foot and a half in diameter can be obtained by any collector of vegetable curiosities. Geraniums, nasturtiums, tomatoes, and many other plants, useful and otherwise, escape from cultivation, modify their habits of growth, and soon become

wild again. Many plants of Mexico, Peru, Chile, the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Mediterranean shores have already become dangerous weeds. The loquat, a choice fruit of Japan, is already growing wild in some cañons where picnicparties have left the seeds. Apricots, peaches, cherries, and English walnuts have been found in the forests-chance seedlings, growing with the madroños and manzanitas.

The horticulturist, no less than the botanist, has his notable trees to admire. Old olive avenues that the mission fathers planted still remain, and some of their seedling pears are like forest-trees for size. The fig becomes a most striking tree when of sufficient age, not only for avenues, but as great tree-arbors. In some cases, in rich and warm soils, its drooping branches root and grow out still further, until it is like a banian for its multitude of stems, and the ground is covered in the season with its ripe fruit. I remember fig-trees in Vaca Valley, in the midst of evergreen oaks, that really seem to be quite as large as the oaks themselves. The walnut groves of Santa Barbara produce the same massive and stately effect when in leaf; they quite dwarf the ordinary orchards by comparison. A great many of the fruit districts of the State will ultimately possess a sort of dignity that seldom belongs to mere

orchards as known in other parts of the world. All the trees will become very large, and will remain in health for a long time. Some of the Riverside oranges are already magnificent trees, and are growing still larger. Pecans, walnuts, Italian chestnuts, the carob of Asia Minor, the pistachio, the olive, and a countless variety of nut- and fruit-trees of especial beauty and character, are being planted everywhere. Then, too, the habit of massing separate fruits- here twenty acres of cherries, there thirty of peach or prune, and between them, perhaps, a vineyard or an olivarium-will always give orchard districts a peculiar charm. When the almond

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is in bloom, one country-side is full of the drifted snow of almond flowers; the next week another little district, only a few miles away, begins to flush pink with peach-blossoms. The whole tendency of California horticulture seems to be toward specialization, and thus the orchards even now possess much of the attractiveness of natural forests. As they grow old and are partly replanted, as the roadside trees become mature, and as new orchards extend into the wilder parts of the State, all men will recognize the fact that California, once a great mining commonwealth, has become a distinctively horticultural community, whose most characteristic feature is the enormous range of plant growth, wild and cultivated.

Every year the broader comparison between the two sides of the continent reveals increasing contrasts. The Californian who visits the

forests, so unlike the pineries of other States. He misses the careless ease of growth, the fullness and variety of exotic plant life. He misses much in color as well as in form. Even the buttercup season of New England, or the time when goldenrod is in its prime, seems cold and fragmentary to the Californian, who is used to the sunlit hill-slopes, where wild poppies and a thousand sorts of liliaceous and composite flowers grow in brilliant hosts under the cloudless skies, and still bloom on and on, while the wild oats, clover, and grasses ripen to golden browns and soft shades of yellow. It is true that New England at its best season appears to the Californian to be unspeakably beautiful, because it is so green, so fresh, so full of small hills and gentle woodlands sloping down to quiet streams: but all the while he thinks of California at the time when the rains are past,

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New England, one can sleep on the ground without a tent, so warm and rainless a land it is. Still the trees grow, the flowers bloom, the singing birds come out of the cañons and dwell in the fruit-laden orchards, the whole realm ripens as a swarthy olive or a bronze-red pomegranate. And, strange to say, the grape, fig, loquat, guava, and all the other exotics that came in so many diverse ways to California, the weeds that perplex the farmer, the fiberplants, the insect-powder bushes from Dalmatia, and a thousand other strangers, seem as much at home as the sequoias, and each in its way has helped to create the memories

that the Californian carries abroad with him. Against a background of snow-peaks he sees the pine forests; the valleys and hillsides of the foreground are filled with gardens and orchards, for whose increasing plant wealth the resources of the whole world are being drawn upon. Old mining ditches are changing to irrigation canals; old pastoral counties grow famous for wines, raisins, dried fruits, and a multitude of plant products. Each district, from the extreme north of the State to the extreme south, has its own peculiar advantages, and California deserves to be characterized as the land of varied horticulture.

Charles Howard Shinn.

PAVEMENT PICTURES.

WILD storm, this languid summer night,

Clashed o'er the city an hour ago;

But now, released in heaven's blue height,
A moon has brought her sorrowing glow,
To flood the massed roofs' dimness dense
With pale celestial penitence.

The breeze wakes rich in soothing damps;
Faint spires loom silvered; and one sees
In street or square, by rain-splashed lamps,
The wet leaves flickering on stray trees;
While black fantastic shapes of dream
Bold from the drying pavements gleam.

Chance moods of moisture's random change,
The dumb stone flaunts their blots grotesque,
Where freaks of spectral traceries range
Through many an elfin arabesque-
Till the huge town's vice, crime, despair,
Seems devilishly pictured there !

Edgar Fawcett,

Ke

DAD.

VII.

A MOUNTAIN EUROPA.

IN TWO PARTS.- PART II.

PICTURES BY E. W. KEMBLE.

ENGRAVED BY CHARLES STATE.

N the following Sunday morning, when Clayton walked up to the cabin, Easter and her mother were seated in the porch. He called to them cheerily as he climbed over the fence, but only the mother answered. Easter arose as he approached, and, without speaking, went within doors. He thought she must be ill, so thin and drawn was her face, but her mother said carelessly:

"Oh, hit 's only one o' Easter's spells. She hev been sort o' puny 'n' triflin' o' late, but I reckon she 'll be all right ag'in in a day or two."

As the girl did not appear again, Clayton concluded that she was lying down, and went

away without seeing her. Her manner had seemed a little odd, but, attributing that to illness, he thought nothing further about it. To his surprise, the incident was repeated, and thereafter, to his wonder, the girl seemed to avoid him. Their intimacy was broken sharply off. When Clayton was at the cabin, either she did not appear or else kept herself busied with household duties. Their studies ceased abruptly. Easter had thrown her books into a corner, her mother said, and did nothing but mope all day, and though she insisted that it was only one of the girl's "spells," it was plain that something was wrong. Easter's face remained thin and drawn, and acquired gradually a hard, dogged, almost sullen look. She spoke to Clayton rarely, and then only in monosyllables. She never looked him in the face. and if his gaze rested intently on her, as she sat with eyes downcast and hands folded, she seemed to know it at once. Her face would color faintly, her hands fold and unfold nervously, and sometimes she would rise and go within. He had no opportunity of speaking with her alone. She seemed to guard against that, and, indeed, Raines's presence almost prevented it, for the mountaineer was there always, and always now the last to leave. He sat usually in the shadow of the vine, and though his face was unseen, Clayton could feel his eyes fixed upon him with an intensity that sometimes made him nervous. The mountaineer had evidently begun to misinterpret his visits to the cabin. Clayton was regarded as a rival. In what other light, indeed, could he appear to Raines? Friendly calls between young people of opposite sex were rare in the mountains. When a young man visited a young woman, his intentions were supposed to be serious. Raines was plainly jealous.

But Easter? What was the reason for her strange behavior? Could she, too, have misconstrued his intentions as Raines had? It was impossible. But even if she had, his manner had in no wise changed. Some one else had aroused her suspicions, and if any one, it must have been Raines. It was not the mother, he felt sure.

For some time Clayton's mother and sister had been urging him to make a visit home. He had asked leave of absence, but it was a busy time, and he had delayed indefinitely. In

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