Fruits^ Vegetables and General Interests^ 27 



well edited and full of practical information upon the olive, 

 orange, lemon, prune, fig, cherry and other fruits, besides 

 horticultural machinery, California patents, and all the sub- 

 jects that belong to the industry. The ten thousand copies 

 printed of each report are almost immediately exhausted. 

 Last year many schools wanted a copy for each pupil, but 

 only one copy could be sent to each district. 



'*The University has charge of five experiment stations. 

 Three of them are well established, one at Jackson, Amador 

 County, for the Sierra foothill region, one at Folsom, for the 

 alkali soils of the San Joaquin, and one at Paso Robles for the 

 Coast Range. The central or home station at Berkeley 

 hardly represents any typical climate. A new and very im- 

 portant station has now been commenced in the Chino Valley, 

 about midway between Chino and Pomona, and this is to be 

 chiefly a citrus and semi-tropic station. The Chino Valley 

 lies mostly in San Bernardino county, and represents a happy 

 medium between the coast and the interior climate. It is not 

 as famous for oranges as the superb citrus colonies of River- 

 side and Redlands, farther inland, but it offers many advan- 

 tages for experiment, and the planting of orchards and laying 

 out of gardens has already commenced there. 



''The work that the California experiment stations have to 

 do is extremely varied. Not only fruits, but a great list of 

 economic and medicinal plants are tested, soils are constantly 

 analyzed, and the horticultural resources of the state are 

 mapped out in the rough by thousands of observations and in- 

 vestigations, which must continue for many years before their 

 full value is understood. A recent bulletin of Professor E. 

 W. Hilgard illustrates the extent of the field. It was a study 

 of ' the amounts removed from the soil by some of the chief 

 fruit crops, of nitrogen, potash, phosphoric acid and lime, 

 these being, according to all experience, the only ones of 

 which the replacement need ordinarily be considered in ferti- 

 lization.' These amounts, the report says, are expressed both 

 with reference to 1,000 pounds of fresh fruit and to what, ac- 

 cording to our best information, maybe assumed to be a 'fair 

 crop ' per acre. The latter figure is, of course, liable to great 

 variations and differences of opinion ; but by the aid of a little 

 arithmetic each one can calculate for himself the data suitable 

 to his own case or views. The crop assumed in the case of 



