18 TRANSACTIONS OP THE 



in military hospitals, donated cargoes to the hungry of other lands, 

 exported breadstuff's, aud increased our national wealth a thousand mil- 

 lions ]H'r annum during three and a half 3-ears of wasteful civil war. 

 Had we possessed nothing superioi- to the cliims}' farming implements of 

 eighteen hundred and twelve, with the high rates of foreign exchange 

 against us, the necessity of importing food would have estopped the war 

 and banki-nptcd the nation. 



The artillery of Gi'ant, and Gilmore, and Sherman, and Sheridan, have 

 thundered bravely at the guilty gates of treason j but the Buckeye 

 mower, the planter, the sower, the reaper, the steam plough, and the 

 threshing machine, are the Armstrongs and Whitworths and Paixhans 

 which have battered down the rebel defenses; and the sulky plough of 

 Illinois is digging that " last ditch " in which the last pot-valiant traitor 

 is to die. We have shot and sabred the ''Johnny Rebs" with the pota- 

 toes of Pennsylvania, the wheat of Ohio, the onions of Weathersfield, the 

 patent shoe pegs of Rhode Island, the woollen mills and sewing machines 

 of Massachusetts, and the yellow corn of the tremendous West, never 

 omitting the gold and silver round shot of California and Xevada. They, 

 poor souls I are ti-ying to retaliate upon us by a noisy discharge of super- 

 annuated doughfaces and fangless Copperheads. M}'' conviction is that 

 they are wasting their powder. 



An annual address, to be suitable to such an occasion, ought to possess 

 something of local interest and value. 



To describe the peculiarities of our climate, the varieties of soil and 

 situation, the great number of cultures which will thrive beneath our 

 skies, the unequalled excellence of our fruits, the inapproachable number 

 and beauty of our flowers, were but to rehearse what has already been 

 many times repeated. But if it rc2:)ays the mortification of a failure to 

 find out the cause of it, if one learns fast under the tuition of expensive 

 blunders, then 1 may regard mj'self as entitled to indulgence with respect 

 to the misadventure of some branches of agriculture in this State. Albeit 

 I Avill condense into twenty lines what might cover tAvice as many pages. 



It was by a blunder that I learned the great value of summer fallow- 

 ing in this climate, in case land be left in such a state as to admit of the 

 thoroufjli harrowing in of the seed iust before the first winter rains. Bv 

 blunders I learned other things; but you will excuse me from speaking 

 in the first person and exclusively of my own experience. 



All who travelled at large in California at a time when the planting of 

 orchards was more "the rage" than now, were mournfull}- saluted by 

 great numbers of young fruit trees, dying or already dead. The j)rinci- 

 pal causes were five : 



First — The pits were dug too shallow and too small. 



Second — The whole or a considerable part of the tops were left on in 

 transplanting, they were "so prett}'." 



Third — The farmer got "pay for the use of the ground" by sowing 

 wheat and barley under the trees. 



Fonrtli — The trees were irrigated (better sa}' irritated) b}^ half a bucket 

 or a bucket of water, poured occasionally into a little basin dug imme- 

 diately around the bole, the effect of which was to bring out a hundred 

 small, sensitive, worthless roots just below the surface; and when the 

 superficial irrigation clianced to go by default a week or two, the poor 

 things died as a matter of course. 



Fifth — The insidious, soft, cowardly, copperhead borers attacked the 

 tree before it fairly got hold of the soil, or because a iroMov gopher was 

 gnawing at the roots. 



