MOST GRACIOUS SIRE AND DEARLY BELOVED BRETHREN: During the past year I have assiduously studied and diligently observed. When formerly the progress of morals was the object in which my energies concentrated, it is now progress in general. To this sole object I have sacrificed my whole time. I have lived like a hermit. I have withdrawn from society. I scarcely know the inside of a saloon or the outside of a bar, because I have steered my boat out of the wild breakers of the bar, where sirens sang to Ulysses, into the quiet port of peaceful domestic intoxication. I am here to offer you the results of my observations. regarding morals, science, art, and things in general. It is a well-known fact that moral phil osophy is the only science in which, since the time of Socrates, no discovery has been made. It has been reserved for my own investigations to discover the important axiom that in a free country no citizen must be tyrannized by his own principles. In astronomy I have to record the recent discovery of an old split in one of the rings of Saturn. It is true this split was known before and was called "Encke's division," or, according to the reporters of our newspapers, "Yankee division"; but the discovery of its exact nature was reserved for our Bohemian astronomer, Colonel Hawes, who has spent many nights watching the rings of Saturn through different glasses, and even bottles. According to the statements of this eminent scientist, the split in the ring of Saturn cannot be mended and is beyond repair. The practical importance of this fact cannot be overrated, for it is more than probable that all other rings will follow the example of Saturn and split; and when all those rings that at present prevent progress in science and art have split, what a bright future lies then before California! As to forest culture, we have to record a most important step. The committee has empowered a posse of intelligent schoolma'ams of both sexes to plant trees on the roadsides. These trees will be exhibited to all passers-by for a nominal entrance fee as soon as the last of our forest trees has become extinct. The insect world has shown through all the later years a perceptible progress and enjoyable tendency to copulate and multiply. We have had grasshoppers, codlingmoths, scale-bugs, and our most gracious Sire has treated successfully, by mercurial ointment, several cases of phylloxera in persons that had come in too close a contact with the vineyard of a friend. We are uncertain whom we have to thank for this revival of the insect world-our brother Harry Edwards, for his absence, or our State entomologists, for their presence. The year has been rather dry and our farmers found sufficient reason to complain; so the inscrutable wisdom of Divine Providence, whose pet is the California granger, sent us rain enough to give him cause to complain about inundation. This dispensation of Providence is still going on, because Providence has been long enough in office to know that as soon as it stops raining the California granger will grow about unusual dryness. So the rain goes on and a new deluge is fairly started. The more thoughtful members of our Academy of Sciences make preparations to transform their hall into a Noah's ark, in order to save all those animals in their stuffed state whose ancestors Noah preserved alive. The citizens of this State are much puzzled about the cause of the flood. Heaven so far has always shown patience to their shortcomings. They are not conscious of an unusual amount of wickedness, nor is there any California Legislature expected to meet at Sacramento. As usual, our authorities have paid no |