456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mon, bulky, and perishable articles are naturally produced as 

 near as possible to the places of consumption, though improve- 

 ments enabling them to be more easily and cheaply transported 

 render them more available for distant markets. Such are the 

 compression and baling of hay, the conveyance of dead meats in 

 refrigerated chambers, of live animals in specially adapted wag- 

 ons and steamships, and of ordinary fresh fruits and vegetables 

 by express trains. More valuable articles and luxuries, such as 

 the finer fruits, sugar, tobacco, and cotton, the cost of transport of 

 which is relatively less important, can and often must be pro- 

 duced in localities specially adapted to them at greater distances 

 from the places of their eventual consumption. Dried fruits are 

 more fitted for distant and uncertain markets than green fruits. 

 Other generally esteemed articles, such as silk, tea, and the finer 

 wines, naturally monopolize the limited areas capable of produc- 

 ing them. On the other hand, as almost any part of the world 

 can grow wheat and the ordinary small grains by the employ- 

 ment of a comparatively limited capital, as the cost of transporting 

 them is inconsiderable, as they are not liable to spoil, and as the 

 enormous quantities in which they are handled and the universal 

 competition among producers of them enable and necessitate their 

 being turned over at the minimum profits, the growth of these 

 indispensable staples is left to the newest, the poorest, and the most 

 remote countries, and to those parts of other countries for which 

 no better employment can be found. A decline in the production 

 of these articles is a sign, beyond doubt, of the increasing wealth of 

 a country, and that it has found better employments for its capital 

 and labor. This is especially noticeable in England, Germany, 

 France, and our own Eastern States ; and California also, it may 

 be noted, is discontinuing the production of grain as rapidly as 

 she can find a market for her higher class articles. A still more 

 decided move in the same direction is only restrained in England 

 by the uncertainty of the climate, and the consequent danger of 

 devoting too great an area to pasturage, green crops, fruit, or 

 hops, since an excess of drought is adverse to the first two, and 

 an excess of moisture to the others. The future order of cultiva- 

 tion in the United States is dependent chiefly on the development by 

 irrigation of the vast arid regions of the West, and upon the nature 

 of the resources which may thereby be disclosed, as also upon the 

 description and extent of the trade just beginning between our 

 Pacific coast, Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand, and 

 that to open up later with the East by the Central American inter- 

 oceanic canal. It is already certain that the convenient position 

 of California for this trade, her variety of climate and elevation, 

 and resulting adaptability for a great choice of productions, 

 insures for her, through the extension of irrigation, a great and 



