438 THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



come from Asia Minor and can convince you, as the fig is so well 

 established there. Now the fig is established here and you have 

 succeeded so far that you are largely the very largest competitor to 

 the original Asia Minor fig, but one of the difficulties you had was 

 to establish the Blastophaga, and it took you twenty-five years from 

 the first time you planted the fig coming from Asia Minor until the 

 day you had your first crop of the Symrna fig. Mind, it took you a 

 lifetime, a Avhole generation, to plant that, and why did it happen? 

 Because we did not know and you did not know the importance of 

 caprifieation. Caprification is a very old practice in the Mediterranean 

 basin. Two famous travelers, explorers, Ollivier and Tournefort of 

 France traveled in Asia Minor in 1870 and they described it minutely 

 — this problem of caprification. They used to take the pollen, the 

 blossom of the Capri fig and tie it with blue or red ribbons or strings 

 to the Smyrna fig, and that was the way the figs were made to caprifi- 

 cate. Some people coming over and seeing these red and blue strings 

 made fun of it, and said it was ridiculous, that it was superstition. 



Let me give you another instance. You have for instance here 

 in Fresno, where you are trying to develop what you call a Seedless 

 Thompson, the raisins which are in reality a variety of seedless grapes 

 which come from Smyrna and which have there a name very easily 

 remembered — Tshakadaksez — or what you call in more comprehensive 

 language, Thompson Seedless. Well you are trying to plant it here. 

 I had an opportunity to speak with different leading men of the indus- 

 try about the methods of preparing the raisins here, and the methods 

 are very interesting, but they are not at all the methods followed in our 

 country. There are a lot of details you do not know — your explorers 

 did not appreciate — this gives you a good deal of trouble lots of times 

 nearly all of you will find out that this will give trouble and cost 

 you money and energy before you will find out what two thousand 

 years of experiments have taught our people there. Therefore, I think 

 that you should, before you introduce a new crop or industry here in 

 your country, study the methods of the older countries, and this, I 

 think, is of the highest importance. 



I had an opportunity to speak before your County Commissioners, 

 and I spoke of the carob tree. This tree has existed in the Mediter- 

 ranean Basin for many years. I am sure you have all seen this tree; 

 it is a beautiful tree; best ornamental tree you could have, the best 

 introduced into California. But you consider it solely as an ornament, 

 whereas we use it as food for cattle, fodder. We are four thousand 

 years older than you in California and we are accustomed to all kinds 

 of funny customs. We are accustomed to make use of everything we 

 can and it pays to do it, too, and I am sure if you could have observed 

 what we do in our country with the carob tree you would long ago have 

 planted this crop in California. Let me tell you, the carob tree yields 

 about four or five tons to the acre a year, and it is a very important 

 forage crop in our country. It yields more to an acre than does alfalfa 



