AGRICULTURE AND SOILS OF CALIFORNIA. 485 
found chiefly along the Sacramento and other streams, carrying much 
“slum” from the hydraulic mines; and peaty land, more prevalent along 
the San Joaquin and its branches. The latter kind consists almost en- 
tirely of tule roots, in various stages of freshness and decay, to a depth 
of from two to twenty and more feet; in the latter case we have the 
“ float land,” which rests on the water-table and rises and falls more or 
less with it. Like the “ Prairie Tremblante,” near New Orleans, it often 
trembles under the tread of a man, but will nevertheless sustain herds 
of cattle without the least danger, its bulges forming places of refuge for 
them in time of high water. An excellent fuel has been made by pulp- 
ing this mass and forming it into bricks like true peat. ‘The tule lands 
were long thought to be worthless except for pasture purposes; but it 
has now come to be well understood that they are in large part of extraor- 
dinary fertility, and, if protected from overflow by levees, are almost 
sure to yield abundant crops every year, even in seasons when those of 
the uplands fail for want of moisture. In their reclamation the construc- 
tion of levees is of course the first thing needful. The sediment land 
can then be taken into cultivation at once by the use of large sod-plows, 
resembling the prairie plows of the Western States. It is usual to burn 
off the rushes and native grasses previous to plowing, especially in the 
peaty lands where the plow would otherwise find no soil. But here the 
fire penetrates several feet down, either to the underlying soil or to 
moisture, leaving bebind a layer of ashes so light that the plow is use- 
less. At the proper season grain is then sown upon the ashes, and either 
brushed in or trodden in by sheep, and extraordinary grain crops are 
thus produced during the first years, the duration of fertility depending, 
of course, upon the soil underlying after the ashes have been exhausted. 
The tule lands bordering upon Tulare Lake are of a different character 
from those of the lower rivers. The soil is heavy, consisting.of fine sed- 
iments mixed with gray clay and shell débris, contains a large supply of 
plant food, and with proper cultivation will doubtless prove as highly 
productive as are the soils of the Great Tulare Plains themselves. 
The soils of the Mojave Desert seem on the whole to be rather light, 
whitish silts, of whose possible productiveness little can as yet be said, 
except that without irrigation culture is hopeless. In striking contrast 
with these close soils of the San Joaquin Valley are those which prevail 
south of the Sierras, San Fernando, and San Gabriel, in the Los Angeles 
Plain and its tributary valleys, the home of the orange, lemon, and olive 
in their perfection. The fine rolling uplands (mesas”) of that region 
are generally covered with a brownish, gravelly loam, from 8 to 20 feet 
in thickness, which, with tillage, assumes the most perfect tilth with 
ease. Itis a generous, “strong” soil, varying locally so as to adapt it- 
self to every variety of crop, yet readily identifiable by its general char- 
acter from Los Angeles to San Diego. In most respects it may be con- 
sidered a variety of the red soils of the Sierra slope already described, 
like which it appears to be pre-eminently adapted to fruit culture. 
The soils of the plain to seaward of Los Angeles, and of the coast 
plains south of Santa Barbara generally, so far as not modified by the 
sediments of the streams, seem to be uniformly characterized by a very 
large amount of glistening mica scales, distributed in a rather sandy, 
dark-colored mass, destitute of coarse materials. They are easily cul- 
tivated and highly productive when irrigated, although not unfre- 
quently afflicted with a certain taint of “alkali.” This, however, when 
not too strong or salt, is here readily neutralized by the use of gypsum. 
“ Alkali” soil is the name used in California to designate any soil 
containing such unusual quantities of soluble salts as to allow them to 
