State Agricultural Society. 5 



also to contribute to the producing qualities and fertility of his soil, 

 which, however rich now, will, in a few years of constant cropping and 

 no manuring, be reduced to a state of poverty and unproductiveness. 

 We would also earnestly urge the planting of greater breadths of land 

 in alfalfa, and a more general practice of cutting and securing more hay 

 and other food, such as pumpkins, and beets, and carrots, for feeding 

 stock during the wet seasons. More barns and sheds, also, for the 

 shelter of stock from the severity of stormy during these seasons, are 

 needed in all portions of the State, and money invested in this way will 

 never be regretted. We think the experience of many during the 

 present season has been such as to attest the correctness of the above 

 recommendations. 



AGRICULTURAL EXPANSION AND IMPROVEMENTS. 



Not only have we during the past seven years developed stock raising 

 resources heretofore unknown, and greatly improved the condition of 

 that interest, while we have been adding rapidly to the number of our 

 herds and flocks, but we have made even greater developments and 

 improvements in the general horticultural and agricultural industries of 

 the country. We have expanded, extended, and diversified our agricul- 

 ture in a most gratifying manner. Had the drought of eighteen hun- 

 dred and seventy-one found our agricultural operations confined almost 

 exclusively to the most accessible and easiest cultivated valley lands of 

 the State, as did the drought of eighteen hundred and sixty-four, and 

 had we confined our efforts to the cultivation of the limited number of 

 agricultural products to which our exertions were at that time princi- 

 pally devoted, the condition of our agriculture to-day, and indeed of our 

 industries generally, must have been anything but gratifying. Step by 

 step and year by year we have been learning that California, which we 

 at first supposed was valuable only as a mining State, possesses a greater 

 diversity of superior agricultural and horticultural advantages than any 

 other State in the Union, and we think without boasting we may truly 

 say, than an} r other equal portion of the earth's surface. In the earlier 

 years of the State's history the cultivation of the soil was confined to 

 the immediate river bottoms, and a few of the commonest vegetables and 

 a little barley constituted the entire list of agricultural products it was 

 deemed possible to grow or safe to experiment with, and fruit culture 

 was confined to a few suj>posed favored localities immediately surround- 

 ing some of the old Missions in the southern portions of the State, and 

 the varieties of fruit cultivated were exceedingly limited. 



The immense plains constituting the next more elevated table of lands 

 back from the rivers and stretching off towards the foothills in either 

 direction, covered as they were each succeeding Summer with a luxu- 

 riant growth of wild oats, standing from four to eight feet high, and so 

 thick on the ground that a man on horseback could scarcely force his 

 way through them, were in those days considered of no value except as 

 ranges for the countless bands of wild mustangs and wild horned, high 

 hipped Spanish cattle that roamed over them. A few isolated, and in 

 those days considered useless and foolhardy experiments were made 

 with this class of lands by the cultivation of wheat and barley. Unex- 

 pected and gratifying success attended the timid experiments. The 

 world knows the result. California wheat has revolutionized the grain 

 markets of the world, as California gold has her commercial routes and 

 money exchanges. 



