STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 195 



ANNUAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY AT SACRA- 

 MENTO, CALIFORNIA, ON THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 22, 1887. 



By Hon. Joseph Budd, of San Joaquin. 



Mr. President, Directors of the State Agricultural Society, 

 Ladies and Gentlemen: The published annual reports of this society 

 abound in many and carefully considered statistics of the productions of 

 this State, and the coming published report of the transactions of the 

 society for the present year, like former ones, will contain all needed sta- 

 tistical information respecting the progress of California, and will make it 

 unnecessary, even if the limited time allotted permitted me so to do, for 

 me to give to you any detailed statements of what has been done in the 

 way of developing the agricultural and industrial wealth of the State. I 

 will, therefore, content myself in indulging in what might be called glitter- 

 ing generalities, or rather in stating in general terms, first, the possibilities 

 of California for material improvement and advancement in population 

 and wealth; second, some of the causes which have hitherto retarded its 

 growth; and third, the fact that these retarding causes are disappearing, 

 and reasons showing why they soon will disappear altogether. 



The total area of California is one hundred and fifty-five thousand nine 

 hundred and eighty square miles, the much larger proportion of which is 

 capable of being properly cultivated. The population of California, 

 according to the census of 1880, was only eight hundred and sixty-four 

 thousand six hundred and ninety-four persons, an increase since the cen- 

 sus of 1870 of only about two hundred thousand people. Italy, with an 

 area of only one hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred and ninety- 

 six square miles, had in 1871 a population of nearly twenty-seven million 

 of people. The United Kingdom of Great Britianand Ireland has an area 

 of a little more than one hundred and twenty thousand square miles, and 

 has a population of over thirty-five million; and Prussia, with her twenty- 

 seven million of inhabitants, has an area of one hundred and thirty-seven 

 thousand and sixty-six square miles. 



Each of these countries, with its teeming millions of people, has a 

 less area of cultivable soil than has this State, and in salubrity and 

 mildness California equals, if it does not surpass Italy itself, the most 

 favored in that respect of any of these nations, and for fertility of soil this 

 land is surpassed by none of them. 



Turning back the pages of history and taking a retrospective view of the 

 nations of antiquity, we find that Egypt, Assyria, Persia, those cradles of 

 ancient civilization, were inhabited by a much more dense population 

 than now inhabit Italy or England; the Island of Ceylon, on whose moun- 

 tain tops are to be seen to-day the footsteps of ancient civilization, possessed 

 in ancient times, within her borders, containing an area of little more 

 than twenty-five thousand miles, cities larger and more populous than is 

 the city of London; and comparatively small Palestine, the land which 



