STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 141 



was in 1886, and the prices are much higher. Our canned and dried 

 fruits are used hy the merchant and naval marine of all nations, and by 

 people in many countries which have a climate that forbids fruit growing 

 to advantage. This market is growing wider and wider each year, and 

 we may expect these kinds of fruits soon to go wherever the sails of com- 

 merce whiten the seas. 



The amounts of fruit used hy the canneries and driers, and consumed 

 by our own population, can be estimated from the fruit product of some of 

 the older fruit districts of the State. Santa Clara County has one million 

 five hundred thousand fruit trees, and it is estimated that the apricot crop 

 of 1887 amounted to fifteen thousand tons, and the other tree fruits to 

 thirty thousand tons more, or, in all, forty-five thousand tons of tree fruits. 

 This is ninety million pounds, or four thousand five hundred carloads, of 

 ten tons each. The volumes of small fruits grown in Santa Clara County 

 are proportionally as large as those of the tree fruits. On one railroad, 

 from one station (Santa Clara) during the berry season, there was no day 

 that the shipments of blackberries amounted to less than four carloads, 

 and on many days at a time the shipments reached eleven carloads per 

 day. While there may not be any other county which as yet equals Santa 

 Clara in the production of small fruits, there are many coast, valley, and 

 foothill counties which produce large quantities, and the area devoted to 

 their cultivation is constantly increasing. Our small fruits, in the green 

 state, find a market in all that country east of the Sierra Nevada Range to 

 the Missouri River. 



Vegetable Growing. 



Vegetable growing has, within the past ten years, assumed large pro- 

 portions. There is not more than one month in the year (January) in 

 which some kinds of vegetables do not mature here. While we have eleven 

 months in which vegetables mature, the great Eastern States, with a popu- 

 lation of forty million people, have little more than three months in the 

 year in which they have fresh vegetables of their own production. There 

 is no other considerable portion of the United States which has one half 

 the time for the continuous maturing of fruits or vegetables which Cali- 

 fornia has. It follows that during a considerable portion of the year we 

 can and do furnish the. East with their fresh vegetables, as well as with 

 fruits. The larger portion of the Rocky Mountain country is not adapted 

 to farming or gardening, and we furnish that section with their vegetables 

 the year around. There is hardly a town in all that vast region, now rap- 

 idly increasing in wealth and population, to which we do not ship vegeta- 

 bles. To the country east of the Missouri River, we ship our garden 

 products in carload or trainload lots, during several months of the year. 

 These shipments are rapidly growing in volume, and the areas to which 

 we ship are constantly widening. The season of shipment to the country 

 east of the Missouri and Mississippi is from October to June. During that 

 time last season, shipments were make by express to nearly all the small 

 towns ; and by carload, and by trainload lots, to the larger places. These 

 larger shipments went to Galveston, San Antonio, Sherman, Austin, and 

 New Orleans, in the south; Denver, Butte City, Kansas City, Omaha, 

 Chicago, and as far east as Cleveland and Cincinnati in the north, and 

 the shipments continued as late as the first of June. In this connection it 

 is noticeable that vegetables should have been shipped to Galveston and 

 New Orleans, on the twenty-ninth and thirtieth parallels of latitude, from 

 points in California fully ten degrees farther north. This is strong proof 

 that California, on the fortieth parallel, has more of a semi-tropic climate, 



