DECEMBER 2.
Nearly all is now covered with a luxuriant growth of vegetation the most diverse, yet all of it foreign to the soil. Side by side are the products of two zones, reaching the highest stages of perfection, yet none of them natives of this coast.
Gay cottages now line the roads where so recently the hare cantered along the dusty cattle-trail; and villages lie brightly green with a wealth of foliage where the roaring wings of myriads of quail shook the air above impenetrable jungles of cactus.
T.S. VAN DYKE,
in Southern California.
DECEMBER 3.
∗ ∗ ∗ The chief and highest function of the University is to assert and perpetually prove that general principles—laws—govern Man, Society, Nature, Life; and to make unceasing war on the reign of temporary expedients. ∗ ∗ ∗ There never was a period or a country in which the reign of fundamental law needed constant assertion and more perpetual proof than our own period and our own country. ∗ ∗ ∗ The living danger is that society may come to permanently distrust the reign of law. ∗ ∗ ∗ A national or a personal life built on expedients of the day, like a house built on the sand, will inevitably come to ruin.
PRESIDENT HOLDEN,
in Inaugural Address of University of California, 1886.
DECEMBER 4.