Meanwhile, the chaparral, which during the long dry season has robed the hills in sombre green, begins to brighten with new life; new leaves adorn the ragged red arms of the manzanita, and among them blow thousands of little urn-shaped flowers of rose-color and white. The bright green of one lilac is almost lost in a luxuriance of sky-blue blossoms, and the white lilac looks at a distance as if drifted over with snow. The cercocarpus almost rivals the lilac in its display of white and blue, and the dark, forbidding adenostoma now showers forth dense panicles of little white flowers. Here, too, a new mimulus pours floods of yellow light, and high above them all the yucca rears its great plume of purple and white.

Thus marches on for weeks the floral procession, new turns bringing new banners into view, or casting on old ones a brighter light, but ever showing a riotous profusion of splendor until member after member drops gradually out of the ranks, and only a band of stragglers is left marching away into the summer. But myriads of ferns, twenty-one varieties of which are quite common, and of a fineness and delicacy rarely seen elsewhere, still stand green in the shade of the rocks and trees along the hills, and many a flower lingers in the timber or cañons long after its friends on the open hills or plains have faded away. In the cañons and timber are also many flowers that are not found in the open ground, and as late as the middle of September, only twenty miles from the sea, and at an elevation of but fifteen hundred feet, I have gathered bouquets that would attract immediate attention anywhere. The whole land abounds with flowers both curious and lovely; but those only have been mentioned which force themselves upon one's attention. Where the sheep have not ruined all beauty, and the rains have been sufficient, they take as full possession of the land as the daisy and wild carrot do of some Eastern meadows. There are thousands of others, which it would be a hopeless task to enumerate, which are even more numerous than most of the favorite wild flowers are in the East, yet they are not abundant enough to give character to the country. For instance, there is a great larkspur, six feet high, with a score of branching arms, all studded with spurred flowers of such brilliant red that it looks like a fountain of strontium fire; but you will not see it every time you turn around. A tall lily grows in the same way, with a hundred golden flowers shining on its many arms, but it must be sought in certain places. So the tiger-lily and the columbine must be sought in the mountains, the rose and sweetbrier on low ground, the night-shades and the helianthus in the timbered cañons and gulches.

Delicacy and brilliancy characterize nearly all the California flowers, and nearly all are so strange, so different from the other members of their families, that they would be an ornament to any greenhouse. The alfileria, for instance, is the richest and strongest fodder in the world. It is the main-stay of the stock-grower, and when raked up after drying makes excellent hay; yet it is a geranium, delicate and pretty, when not too rank.

But suddenly the full blaze of color is gone, and the summer is at hand. Brown tints begin to creep over the plains; the wild oats no longer ripple in silvery waves beneath the sun and wind; and the foxtail, that shone so brightly green along the hill-side, takes on a golden hue. The light lavender tint of the chorizanthe now spreads along the hills where the poppy so lately flamed, and over the dead morning-glory the dodder weaves its orange floss. A vast army of cruciferæ and compositæ soon overruns the land with bright yellow, and numerous varieties of mint tinge it with blue or purple; but the greater portion of the annual vegetation is dead or dying. The distant peaks of granite now begin to glow at evening with a soft purple hue; the light poured into the deep ravines towards sundown floods them with a crimson mist; on the shady hill-sides the chaparral looks bluer, and on the sunny hill-sides is a brighter green than before.

COMPARATIVE TEMPERATURE AROUND THE WORLD.

The following table, published by the Pasadena Board of Trade, shows the comparative temperature of well-known places in various parts of the world, arranged according to the difference between their average winter and average summer:

Place. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Difference
Summer, Winter.
Funchal, Madeira 62.88 64.55 70.89 70.19 8.01
St. Michael, Azores 57.83 61.17 68.33 62.33 10.50
PASADENA 56.00 61.07 67.61 62.31 11.61
Santa Cruz, Canaries 64.65 68.87 76.68 74.17 12.03
Santa Barbara 54.29 59.45 67.71 63.11 13.42
Nassau, Bahama Islands 70.67 77.67 86.00 80.33 15.33
San Diego, California 54.09 60.14 69.67 64.63 15.58
Cadiz, Spain 52.90 59.93 70.43 65.35 17.53
Lisbon, Portugal 53.00 60.00 71.00 62.00 18.00
Malta 57.46 62.76 78.20 71.03 20.74
Algiers 55.00 66.00 77.00 60.00 22.00
St Augustine, Florida 58.25 68.69 80.36 71.90 22.11
Rome, Italy 48.90 57.65 72.16 63.96 23.26
Sacramento, California 47.92 59.17 71.19 61.72 23.27
Mentone 49.50 60.00 73.00 56.60 23.50
Nice, Italy 47.88 56.23 72.26 61.63 24.44
New Orleans, Louisiana 56.00 69.37 81.08 69.80 25.08
Cairo, Egypt 58.52 73.58 85.10 71.48 26.58
Jacksonville, Florida 55.02 68.88 81.93 62.54 96.91
Pau, France 41.86 54.06 70.72 57.39 28.86
Florence, Italy 44.30 56.00 74.00 60.70 29.70
San Antonio, Texas 52.74 70.48 83.73 71.56 30.99
Aiken, South Carolina 45.82 61.32 77.36 61.96 31.54
Fort Yuma, California 57.96 73.40 92.07 75.66 34.11
Visalia, California 45.38 59.40 80.78 60.34 35.40
Santa Fé, New Mexico 30.28 50.06 70.50 51.34 40.22
Boston, Mass 28.08 45.61 68.68 51.04 40.60
New York, N. Y. 31.93 48.26 72.62 48.50 40.69
Albuquerque, New Mexico 34.78 56.36 76.27 56.33 41.40
Denver, Colorado, 27.66 46.33 71.66 47.16 44.00
St. Paul, Minnesota 15.09 41.29 68.03 44.98 52.94
Minneapolis, Minnesota 12.87 40.12 68.34 45.33 55.47

CALIFORNIA AND ITALY.

The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, in its pamphlet describing that city and county, gives a letter from the Signal Service Observer at Sacramento, comparing the temperature of places in California and Italy. He writes: