AGRICULTURE. 1^5 



and the price of fruit rapidly falling from year to year ; the 

 trunk is shaded, and protected against the disease called the 

 sun-scald; the earth about the roots is kept moist; and the 

 trees are protected against the wind. 



The trees are planted from one-sixth to one-half nearer to- 

 gether in the orchards than in the Eastern states. This is an 

 additional protection against sun and wind. The ground is 

 ploughed several times every summer, and kept clean ; whereas 

 in the Eastern orchards it is common to sow grass or cultivate 

 vegetables. Our apple-trees are free from the borers after the 

 first year, and our plum and cherry trees from the curculio, 

 though the plum suffers from the aphis or louse. 



Fruit-trees in California are generally as large at two years 

 old as they are in New York at three and four years. The in- 

 stances of unusually rapid growth here are without parallel 

 elsewhere. Cherry-trees have grown to be fourteen feet high 

 in one year ; pear-trees ten feet high ; peach-trees to have 

 trunks from two to three inches in diameter. These were all 

 from buds on yearling stocks, and were well provided with 

 branches — not trimmed to gain height. These specimens of 

 rapid growth were observed on an island near the junction of 

 the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. At Petaluma, a 

 cherry-tree two years old from the graft, and three from the 

 seed, had a trunk seven inches and three-quarters round ; a 

 plum-tree, three years from the seed, was eleven feet high, and 

 had a trunk seven inches in circumference ; and a peach-tree, 

 one year from the bud, was eight feet high and eight and a 

 half inches round. 



Mr. E. B. Crocker, of Sacramento, wrote thus in December, 

 1858: "In January, 1855, I planted a small almond-tree, with 

 a stem little larger than a goosequill, and which I cut down 

 within a few inches of the ground. It is now a tree twenty 

 feet high, sixteen feet through the top, with branches starting 

 from the surface of the earth. The body below the branches 



is twenty-four inches in circumference A Glout Morceau 



dwarf pear-tree, planted in 1855, when it had grown one year 



