STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 471 



good price, gives only $128 per acre. These trees were two-year old plants 

 set in the ground in the springs of 1872-3-4. Many of them are now- 

 touching in the center of the rows. To prune them back will be a great 

 work. To take out every other one and give them eighty feet each, which 

 we will probably be obliged to do sooner or later, will give us only about 

 seven to each acre. 



The production as above is a good showing, but when we consider the 

 time that the walnut grower has to wait for a crop and the value of the 

 land for other purposes, say for lima beans, it is, after all, not so much. 

 The area of land suitable for successful walnut growing is very limited. ' 

 It requires well drained, deep, sandy, bottom land, well protected, and 

 where no "live oak "trees have grown within the last century. Every- 

 where where the live oak has been recently rooted out the walnut tree will 

 die about the time it bears the second crop, perhaps earlier. The second 

 planted to replace will die in about the fifth year; the third, in the first, 

 second, or third year. I doubt if any fruit trees will do well where an oak 

 forest has recently existed. 



The elder Pliny, in his natural history, written nearly two thousand 

 years ago, speaks of this fact existing on the northern coast of the Medi- 

 terranean, and cautious planters from attempting fruit growing where an 

 oak forest has recently existed. 



There are various other causes, no doubt, that will prevent success. 

 Trees will die apparently without a cause, and the planter, after waiting 

 ten or a dozen long years, will be compelled to root them out and try some- 

 thing else. One half the orchards that have been planted will never be a 

 success. 



My advice to those anticipating walnut growing is, first visit the various 

 localities and profit by the experience of those now engaged in the business. 

 In Santa Barbara there is no irrigation. A very interesting paper on the 

 walnut was read by F. R. Willis before the Los Angeles Pomological So- 

 ciety, at Downey City, October seventh last, published in the " Los Angeles 

 Sunday Herald" of the tenth. Mr. Willis presents extreme views, with 

 which I do not agree. 



ELLWOOD COOPER. 



Santa Barbara, November 1, 1886. 



THE ARID REGION. 



Greely's Statement of Rainfall Beyond the Mississippi. 



General A. W. Greely, Chief Signal Officer, gave to the Washington 

 Philosophical Society, at its regular meeting, February eighteenth, the 

 partial results of a study he is now engaged upon, of the rainfall in the 

 trans-Mississippi region. He had before him a number of maps upon 

 which had been charted the observations which were the basis of his study, 

 and referred to them constantly as he spoke. He said that the idea that 

 there is any part of the west that is absolutely rainless is now a banished 

 myth. During the past ten years the number of stations for observation 

 has been doubled, so that there are, in twelve States and Territories, nearly 

 one hundred stations; and the observations, if reduced to a single one, 

 would cover a period of nearly five thousand years. The result of charting 

 these observations has been to reduce very greatly the areas of small rain- 

 fall. The area in which the annual precipitation was supposed to be less 



