92 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



City. A more euphonious and equally appropriate name is ^'tlio City of a 

 Tliousand Oaks,'' and still \\e 2:lorv in our sawdust; '^a workman is known bv 

 liis ciiips.'' We have already begun to export it to places destitute, we pave 

 our streets with it, we encroach upon the water and make land with it, and* 

 liave fully demonstrated tiiat it was not made in vain. In making it we cut 

 yearlv around our lake, lumber enougli to lay a floor over eight thousand acres. 



AVe often hear people who never cultivate any land say that our soil is worth- 

 lessly barren, so light and sandy that a warranty deed will not hold it. Our 

 apology is that sand is a very important element in agriculture. It is a com- 

 ponent part of all fertile clays. Xo soil is adapted to all vegetation ; what we 

 need is to know how to manage it. The astonishing growth that we some- 

 times see here admonishes us that we do not well understand its culture, or 

 how to produce its maximum of products. Turnips liave been raised, which 

 with their tops of thirty inches length weighed eighteen pounds and the small 

 strap leaved variety, that could not be got into a half bushel ; and we defy 

 California and all the world to produce more weight and bulk of squashes, 

 than have been grown here from a single seed, dropped accidentally, and with- 

 out culture. Tlie natural growth of peach trees when decently cultivated is 

 not to be beaten. Our grapes never suffer from rot or mildew, and if we plant 

 early varieties only, we are successful. Tiiey require little rain but a large 

 amount of heat, and though our soil is warm we clo not probably get the mean 

 summer heat of the interior of the State, but this is more than balanced by 

 our high winter and fall temperature ; but the half ripened grapes with which 

 our market is every year stuffed, admonishes us to plant only such kinds as 

 will ripen. 



If we have not developed as much in the science of pomology as our neigh- 

 bors north and south of us, there has been and is now, a very good reason for 

 it, aside from the general adaptability of our soil and climate. We are four 

 and a half miles in a direct line from Lake Michigan; between us and it (ex- 

 cept at the narrow outlet of the river) there intervenes high sand bluffs that 

 operate in a measure to shut off the influence of that deep body of water. 

 Other points on this shore so far as I learn that have been more successful are 

 more elevated in their aspects, and nearer the big lake and have been more for- 

 tunate so far as this science is concerned, in the location of their settlements. 

 1 say fortunate, for it seems to have been a matter of convenience for other 

 kinds of business than that of fruit-growing, that has guided us in these 

 locations. 



AT310SPHEIIIC DKAIXAGE. 



Subsequent settlers, in investigating the local causes of success with fruit 

 have invented the expression, ''Atmospheric Drainage." The man who in- 

 vented that phrase is justly entitled to all the blessings so fervently bestowed 

 by Sancho Panza upon "tlie man who invented sleep;" for tliis phrase when 

 fully understood explains one of the great secrets of successful tree and vine 

 fruit-growing everywhere, most especially when combined witli tiie vast in- 

 fluence of these great heat-retaining bodies of water. 



We are not here by any means destitute of choice fruit points, but their be- 

 ing somewhat isolated from business centers, but more especially for tlie lack 

 of knowledge which the plirase quoted ex])resses, they have mainly thus far 

 been left unimproved, leaving to the future occupant who shall have learnt 

 more from the experience of others, and wlio sliall understand better this 



