112 TRANSACTIONS OF STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ANIMAL AND DAIRY INDUSTRIES IN CALIFORNIA, 



By LEROY ANDERSON, 

 Instructor in Animal and Dairy Husbandry, University of California. 



Modern history has shown that, as the State becomes older, its 

 resources better known and more thoroughly exploited, greater and 

 greater attention is paid by the Government to the primitive and yet 

 foundation industry of agriculture. The testimony of European coun- 

 tries is that the best development of the nation and the enlightenment 

 of its people demand a thorough study, by trained men under Govern- 

 ment employ, of all the sciences which so intricately entwine all the 

 functions of plant and animal growth and upon which rests the true 

 agriculture of to-day. Every State in the Union, and the National 

 Government itself, bear similar testimony to the importance of agri- 

 cultural education in the establishment of agricultural colleges and 

 experiment stations all over our broad land. When the soil in its 

 virgin condition returns rich harvests by only the shallowest kind of 

 cultivation, there is little call from the farmer for knowledge concerning 

 his business. But when the soil refuses to respond handsomely to such 

 treatment; when mining the soil, as it were, ceases to be profitable, then 

 the farmer looks about for the scientist to tell him what to do, and the 

 State responds to his needs. Or, in growing fruit or producing the 

 various meat and dairy products, so long as the supply is sufficiently 

 short of the demand to insure a large margin of profit, there is little 

 incentive to a careful study of the business tending toward improvement 

 in production. Let the market become overstocked, however, and prices 

 go so low as to cut off the usual easy profit, then there is a battle fof 

 the " survival of the fittest,''' and a call for some one to tell how to 

 decrease the cost of production so as to insure a living profit. 



The State of California was one of the first to appreciate the needs of 

 agriculture by establishing an Experiment Station and College of 

 Agriculture, and all who are familiar with the work of this institution 

 testify to its inestimable value to the development of the State as well 

 as to the multitude of individual citizens who have been directly bene- 

 fited by its services. California has as varied a condition of soil, climate, 

 and production as all the rest of the United States combined; the 

 demands, therefore, upon the Experiment Station have been most 

 peculiar and extensive. That these demands have been well met is 

 attested by the vast knowledge which is now possessed concerning the 



