ALMOND CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 329 



American market. What there is of it, however, is rapidly filling 

 up with the trees. Not more than half of those already set out 

 are now in bearing. So it may not be many years before the 

 California almond-grower will be able to depress a market which 

 he can never hope to wholly supply, even with the burden of a 

 high protective tax of five cents a pound heaped upon his foreign 

 competitor.* 



For the past year I have myself been an almond grower, in a 

 small way, my total product being almost exactly one car-load. 

 The purpose of this paper is to describe the processes by which 

 the favorite nut of Americans is produced and made ready for 

 their holiday tables. 



To begin at the beginning, the almond is strictly a budded or 

 grafted tree. A seedling apple, peach, cherry, or plum is sure to 

 be good for something and marketable at a fair price, though 

 it may be far below the grafted stock in quality and product- 

 iveness. The seedling almond may, like other seedlings, be an 

 improvement, but it is very apt to be utterly worthless and 

 unsalable, and may ue deadly poison. It is as if its evolution 

 were so recent that its type is not well set, and its tendency to 

 atavism, or " breeding back " to older types, quite strong. This 

 inclination to " sport " shows itself even in budded and grafted 

 trees. All except the oldest trees on this ranch were planted 

 and budded on the ranch, under the careful supervision of the 

 owner. In selecting the buds and scions he not only paid strict 

 attention to varieties, but took care to cut from none but the 

 most prolific bearers of the best nuts among the tested trees of 

 each variety. In spite of all his care, we have some interest- 

 ing sports. There are trees that never bear at all ; others bear 

 worthless nuts. One yields a nearly perfect peach-pit inclosed 

 in a nearly perfect almond drupe. And the four named varie- 

 ties, though amply distinct when fairly represented, now and 

 then shade into one another so gradually that the most experi- 



* The table on page 314, Internal Commerce of the United States, 1890, estimates the 

 " shipment " of almonds as follows : 



Tear. Pounds. 



1885 1,050,000 



1886 600,000 



1887 500,000 



1888 450,000 



1889 600,000 



Whence or whither the " shipments " were made is not stated. The connection indicates 

 that they were from the eight leading fruit and nut shipping points in California. The 

 figures look like guesses, and no clew is given to the amounts shipped from the other points 

 to San Francisco, to be reshipped and thus counted twice in the table, which does not in- 

 clude some important almond-shipping points ; and would not include my 15,000 pounds 

 sent from a point not named in it direct to Chicago. 



