Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets

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Title: Report on the Agriculture Experiment Stations of the University of California (PH 4-16)(1890) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Pamphlets Catalog #: PH 4-16 Author: E.W. Hillgard Published: 1890 # of Pages: 211 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Printed or handwritten: All printed text Date Scanned: 2024-10-31 16:19:15 Scanned By: Shelby Figueroa Scanning Equipment: CZUR Book Scanner OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: JPGs First Created: 2025-03-17 05:48:55 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:48:55

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

Page: of 211  

CENTRAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 21 became available under the Act of Congress known as the ‘‘ Hatch law,” establishing experiment stations in each State. This was an exceedingly important enactment for our station, because the work had outgrown the space and facilities which could be spared for it in the older University buildings. Its requirements in work exceeded the compass of the old force of assistants, and improved facilities for field, garden, and greenhouse cultures were alsoimperatively demanded. The addition of the United States funds to those hitherto available from the University resources, also made possible the establishment of outlying culture sub-stations, of which Professor Hilgard had early seen the need, and which he had advocated in his reports and public addresses for the previous decade. The most obvious results thus far attained by the realization of funds from the Hatch law are: The increased force. and vastly extended and improved facilities at the Central Station at Berkeley, and the establishment and equipment of the outlying stations. General Climatic and Topographic Features of the Bay Region. The “bay region” constitutes a climatic as well as a hydrographic and topographic feature; for, insignificant as the break formed by the Golden Gate may seem, it modifies profoundly the climate of the country lying adjacent and opposite to it, not only by the influence of its cool tide water, but as well by the correspondingly cool lower air currents sweeping through it almost throughout the season, and carrying with them both the temperature and the moisture of the ocean, both modified by the cold Alaskan current. In summer, the river of fog,a mile and a quarter wide and from six hundred to fifteen hundred feet high, may be seen flowing in steadily through the Gate in the afternoon, first submerging the city of San Francisco, and then broadening and sending off branches right and left up and down the bay, and toward evening reaching the opposite shore, where the Contra Costa Range forms a barrier fora time. Eventually this is surmounted, and finally the cloudy ocean may reach as far as Mount Diablo, where it dissolves before the dry air of the Great Valley. The direct influence of this current extends about ten miles each way on the opposite shore, causing an exceptionally low summer temperature, which fails to eben the grape and the fig. On the western shore of the bay the high ranges of the immediate coast form a barrier not surmounted by a considerable proportion of the summer fogs; under the lee of these a warmer summer temperature prevails on the bay-shore slopes of the counties of San Mateo and Marin, as well as on both shores of the southern portion of San Francisco Bay, toward San José. The cold currents strike across San Pablo Bay into the lower part of Napa and Sonoma Valleys, but are chiefly deflected so as to form a steady and sometimes hard “ blow” through the Straits of Carquinez, beyond which they enter the Great Valley and form the regular ‘‘up-valley” winds of that region. Back of the bold promontory that narrows the passage from San Pablo into San Francisco Bay, begins the sloping plain (and in part the marsh belt) that skirts the eastern bay-shore from San Pablo to San José, forming, with the corresponding plain lying south of San Francisco on the western shore, an important and thickly populated agricultural region. Opposite San Francisco this slope is about three miles wide, falling about three hundred feet from the foot of the Contra Costa hills. Southward it widens to seven or eight miles on either shore, a tide marsh belt of varying width striking the bay shore; and the two belts, finally uniting at the lower end of the bay, form the broad and fertile Santa Clara Valley, so noted for