240 REPORT OP STATE BOARD OP HORTICULTURE. 



ment was much easier, because, after testing a certain variety, and its merits 

 becoming- fully known, they were reproduced by budding. The long period 

 required by the walnut to come into bearing was a bar to any experiments 

 in this line, and it was grown from the seed almost altogether. But this is 

 no longer so. Fruit culture has reached the height of perfection, and is 

 now being conducted on broad lines and scientific principles. Inferior seed- 

 lings are giving way to grafted and budded trees of the choicest kinds, or to 

 seedlings of chosen selections ; their habits are studied, and the novice or 

 the grower does not have to wait and undergo years of toil and anxiety to 

 acquire results, but can profit by the experience of others who have made 

 fruit culture the study of their lives, and who show their liberality and 

 warmheartedness by sharing this knowledge with their neighbors. 



ORIGIN OF IMPROVED HOME VARIETIES. 



While large walnut orchards were set out, and many new plantings made 

 every season, consisting mainly of seedling trees produced from seed from 

 the old historic trees of early introduction, no attempt was ever made to 

 produce improved varieties by cross-pollination, and none are yet recorded. 

 Only recently have improved varieties become known, and these originated 

 from chance seedlings. In 1867 Mr. .loseph Sexton, of Goleta, Santa Bar- 

 bara County, purchased in San Francisco a sack of walnuts supposed to have 

 come from South America, labeled "English Walnuts," from which he 

 raised about one thousand trees, and the spring following ( 1868 ) planted two 

 hundred of these trees in orchard form at Goleta. Sixty proved to be of a 

 soft-shell variety. Later he planted twenty-four trees raised from soft-shell 

 nuts from his original trees ; of this number twenty-one came true ( the 

 same ) to the parent tree, and three made a much stronger growth, com- 

 menced fruiting in the sixth year, and pioduced a soft-shell nut, and an 

 improvement over the original trees. The first he named Santa Barbara 

 Soft-Shell, and the latter Improved Soft-Shell, by which names they are now 

 known. In 1859 Hon. Russell Heath, of Carpinteria, furnished Mr. Stowe, 

 at Santa Barbara, with a large quantity of walnuts from his orchard of 

 so-called "English" walnuts, for planting. Among the trees that Mr. 

 Stowe raised fi'om that seed, one produced soft-shell nuts. It is Mr. Heath's 

 firm belief that this nut must have come from a chance seedling produced by 

 him from seed which he procured from the orchard of the late William 

 Wolfskin, at Los Angeles, from whom he obtained his first seed. There is 

 no instance on record where any soft-shell walnuts had been produced prior 

 to that time. 



Mr. George W. Ford, of Santa Ana, originated soft-shell walnuts, which 

 he christened Ford's Eureka and Ford's Improved Soft-Shell. They were 

 produced from seed grown by Mr. Sexton, of Goleta. Mr. Felix Gillet has 

 originated the California Paper-Shell, the Columbus, the Cluster Proepar- 

 turiens, and the Mayette-Shaped Proeparturiens. Many other varieties have 

 been catalogued, mostly because they were new, but were never passed u])on 

 by any competent authority, or their merits determined. Most of these 

 trees, on coming into bearing, produced a nut similar to that of the tree 



