10 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



At the rate o£ increase in production that has taken place within the 

 past few years, we will soon supply all we will need for home con- 

 sumption, and with our immense resources in this direction, we may 

 in the near future supply the markets of the world. The advances 

 made within the past few years in the production of citrous and 

 other semi-tropical fruits have been most gratifying. From a small 

 beginning in a limited section of the State, to which it was till lately 

 supposed the culture must be confined by climatic influences, the 

 production of these fruits has spread into almost every county in the 

 State, and practical experience has demonstrated not only the prac- 

 ticability of an extended culture, but the profitableness of the same. 

 We have learned that oranges ripen earlier in central than in south- 

 ern California, and that those grown in any section of the State, if of 

 good kinds, are equal, and superior in many respects, to those grown 

 in the South Atlantic or Galf States, or the West India Isles. One 

 point of superiority is their keeping quality, giving to them a com- 

 mercial value above any produced in any other part of the world. 

 With the advantages we possess in the extended season of ripening, 

 and the superior keei^ing qualities, we will be able, in a compara- 

 tively short period of time, to check and stop importations from 

 foreign countries to the United States, and practically monopolize 

 this valuable trade. 



The past and the present winters have both been among the coldest 

 ever experienced in the State, and yet but very little damage has 

 been done by the frost in any section of the State to the orange and 

 lemon trees, even the smallest and youngest, except where they had 

 been injudiciously irrigated too late in the season, thus keeping the 

 trees in a rapidly growing condition, and giving them no time to 

 mature their wood before they were exposed to our severest weather. 

 Many of the ornamental and some of the fruit-bearing palms have 

 been proven of sufficient hardiness to withstand the severest winters 

 of our interior valleys, and their introduction to many of our private 

 grounds adds greatly to the beauty and attractiveness of the same, 

 and to the semi-tropical air of our towns and cities. If our public 

 parks and State grounds were more generally planted with a mixture 

 of the orange, lemon, and palms, in addition to the usual evergreen 

 and deciduous ornamental trees, they would blend an appearance of 

 the useful and the ornamental, and add very much to their value, 

 indicating tlie special superiority of our climate. We hold that the 

 public grounds under care of the State should at least be kept abreast 

 with the advanced lessons of practical culture and private enterprise. 

 The State Capitol grounds, for instance, should convey to our own 

 citizens, and to strangers visiting them, the possibilities of our soil 

 and climate in the most extended arboriculture and ornamentation, 

 bringing together the best specimens of trees and shrubs from the 

 sunny South and the freezing North, and so combining and alter- 

 nating them as to produce the most charming effects — the highest 

 degree of success in natural landscape picturing. The successful 

 landscape gardener is an artist in the highest sense of that word. 

 Our State Capitol grounds should present a picture worthy of the best 

 artist we have among us. Nothing short of this should satisfy its 

 managers or the people. 



The present winter has been one of the most favorable ever known 

 in the State for seeding, and the largest area ever known is now in 

 wheat, and a very much larger proportion than usual has been put in 



