516 . AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
It is regretted by many as a great evil that so large tracts of land are 
held by individuals who refuse to sell at prices that emigrants are will- 
ing to pay. The traveler is everywhere impressed with the immense 
extent of fields, farms, and flocks. It is stated that in Los Angeles 
County a person can travel twenty-seven miles of highway through one 
man’s land. Two farmers from Maine, who crossed the mountains in 
1852, with 2,000 sheep, now shear 100,000, having a ranch of 200,000 
acres. Another firm has 3,500 milch cows; another sold $40,000 worth 
of wheat from his farm of 13,000 acres. The valley lands are wonder- 
fully rich and productive, with so mild a climate that farm stock is 
rarely housed. This accounts for the rapid increase of agricultural pro- 
duction. 
The consumption of rice amounts to about 50,000,000 pounds annu- 
ally. As there are thousands of acres of lands on the Lower Sacramento 
and San Joaquin Rivers eminently suitable in every respect for the eul- 
tivation of this valuable grain, and the State has a large population of 
Chinese and other laborers well calculated for this industry, attention 
is called to the utilization of these now comparatively worthless lands. 
More attention is recommended to planting vineyards. There are 
many treeless districts in the State, yielding no pasture for grazing pur- 
poses, which, by being planted with vines, that flourish even in an arid 
soil, would soon be covered with verdure; this, in the opinion of 
meteorologists, would increase the supply of moisture and rain, and 
materially benefit the grain-grower and grazier. Besides, the vine does 
not exhaust rich soils as the cereals do. There are vineyards in Los 
Angeles more than one hundred years old, which still bear full crops 
every year. More than a million of orange and lemon trees were set out 
last year in the southern part of the State. 
The cultivation of silk, it is thought, will eventually become an 
important agricultural industry in the State. A moderate premium 
offered by the legislature has attracted a large number of valuable 
immigrants, skilled in all the branches of this rich industry, and 
numerous plantations of mulberry trees have been started. More than 
4,000,000 cocoons were raised last year, and a party of Japanese have 
purchased 2,000 acres of land in El Dorado County, and are busy in 
raising the mulberry for silk, as well as the tea plant. Some local and 
apparently temporary causes have cast a Shadow over the prospects of the 
silk business for the past year, but it is thought they will be removed, 
and a brighter prospect open for its development and successful prose- 
cution. As in most pioneer enterprises, there have been failures, which 
can now be attributed to plain and palpable causes, and the committee 
report that, ‘‘as a whole, the silk interest is prosperous, and, with per- 
severance on the part of our silk-growers, they have every reason to 
look with certainty for a brilliant future.” 
The question of doing away with fences is now agitating the minds 
of farmers. They are an enormous expense in California, as in all new 
States. President Parks says: 
When a man invests $1,000 here for land he is required to invest $2,000 to fence it. 
Almost every man who desires to farm has the means and ability to acquire a small 
farm in this country, but there are those who cannot acquire even a small farm and 
fence it, as required by law. In other words, one man, with six or eight cows, perhaps, 
will come into a neighborhood and prevent ten men from producing a thousand bushels 
of wheat each. This is most absurd. There is no reason why one individual should 
pursue an occupation to the great injury of hundreds of others; no reason why A should 
be compelled to build two miles of fence that he may raise three hundred bushels of 
grain, to accommodate B, who milks three cows. Let B take gare of his cows. Let 
him fence ten acres, or, in other words, let him keep his property from trespassing on 
mine. 
