f December. Then the
seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if
they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life.
The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of
the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts and
myriads of young leaves. Then one species after another comes into
flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which
lasts until May.

The "rainy season" is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant
cloudiness and rain. Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in
the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so
full of bland, plant-building sunshine. Referring to my notes of the
winter and spring of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors,
on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced
rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th.
January had only six rainy days--that is, days on which rain fell;
February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the
so-called rainy season, which was about an average one. The ordinary
rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent. The winds,
which in settled weather come from the northwest, veer round into the
opposite direction, the sky fills gradually and evenly with one general
cloud, from which, the rain falls steadily, often for days in
succession, at a temperature of about 45 deg. or 50 deg..

More than seventy-five per cent. of all the rain of this season came
from the northwest, down the coast over southeastern Alaska, British
Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, though the local winds of these
circular storms blow from the southeast. One magnificent local storm
from the northwest fell on March 21. A massive, round-browed cloud came
swelling and thundering over the flowery plain in most imposing majesty,
its bossy front burning white and purple in the full blaze of the sun,
while warm rain poured from its ample fountains like a cataract, beating
down flowers and bees, and flooding the dry watercourses as suddenly as
those of Nevada are flooded by the so-called "cloudbursts." But in less
than half an hour not a trace of the heavy, mountain-like cloud-structure
was left in the sky, and the bees were on the wing, as if nothing more
gratefully refreshing could have been sent them.

By the end of January four species of plants were in flower, and f