STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 135 



attention the average can be made to equal $1,000 per acre on trees 

 twelve years old. 1 have seen trees on our property that have yielded 

 3,000 oranges per tree, which oranges at $20 per thousand would give 

 per acre a result of $4,140. The average price for the past five years, 

 to those who have shipped their oranges, has been between $20 and 

 $25 per thousand." The average prices for oranges in San Francisco 

 for the past two years has been $22 50 per thousand. A gentleman 

 in old San Bernardino has an orange orchard of eighty-three trees to 

 the acre, and the average sales per tree has been 2,000 oranges, sold 

 at three cents apiece, or $30 per thousand, equal to $60 per tree, or 

 $4,980 per acre. The Wolfskill orchard in Los Angeles, consisting of 

 sixty acres of bearing trees, realized for its owner in 1878 the sum of 

 $80,000. Gullesio speaks of trees seen by him in Spain which yielded 

 4,000 oranges per annum, and it is certified to that one tree in the 

 Sandwichlslands produced 12,000 oranges in one year. These are of 

 course somewhat exceptional products, but they go to show the possi- 

 bilities of orange culture under favorable circumstances, and offer 

 great inducements to the creating of favorable circumstances by cul- 

 tivators. Will the business continue to pay? The oranges produced 

 in California now are all consumed within the State, and 5,000,000 

 more are annually imported from Tahiti and other islands, so that 

 until this demand is satisfied there is already a market awaiting an 

 increased production. By the time this demand is supplied from our 

 own orchards it is certain that the increase in population in the Pacific 

 Coast States will create at least another equally increased demand. 

 But it is not to the Pacific Coast alone that we may look for a market 

 for our oranges when we have produced a surplus. It will be remem- 

 bered that up to the time when we had raised wheat in excess of 

 home consumption the price of wheat was not as steady and certainly 

 remunerative as when Liverpool merchants were assured that they 

 could draw on California for the supply of a certain portion of their 

 annual deficiencies. It is an almost universal rule of commerce that 

 a supply creates or discovers a demand. When Chicago, New York, 

 Philadelphia, Boston, and other Eastern cities can be supplied with 

 California oranges, their merchants will look to California for that 

 supply just as certainly as the merchants of Liverpool now look to 

 California for her annual surplus of wheat. There are good reasons 

 for this assertion other than commercial reasons. 



California oranges are superior to either the Florida, Louisiana, or 

 Havana oranges in many respects, among which we may mention in 

 this connection their superior keeping qualities, which gives them 

 great advantages in a commercial sense. The New York Evening 

 Post, speaking of some oranges sent them from Los Angeles, says: 

 "Tliey £ire of remarkable fineness and of a flavor which, without 

 possessing the saccharine sweetness of the Havana orange, is even 

 more rich, and, in consequence of the blending of its sweetness with 

 a little acidity, is more agreeable. * * * 'phe orange of Tyre, of 

 Sidon, and of Jaffa, is peculiarly fine in size and quality, but it does 

 not excel in either respect that of Los Angeles." An intelligent 

 writer in a new York journal, comparing the Los Angeles oranges 

 with others in that market, says: "They combine the qualities of 

 the Florida, the Louisiana, and Havana oranges, having the size of 

 the former, the skin of the second, and the delicious flavor of the 

 latter. The trees are stronger and bear more luxuriantly than either 

 of the above mentioned, and the fruit lasts longer on the trees, is 



