PLAIN, WEST OF THE SACRAMENTO RIVER. 



After leaving the Sonoma and Napa Districts on an easterly line of travel, 

 you enter immediately on the southern end of the Sacramento Valley, west of 

 the river. The Bacca Plain may properly be considered the commencement of 

 the valley at this point. 



The soil along this line of country northward, to the County of Colusi, differs 

 somewhat from that of the coast valleys preceding. They are made up for the 

 most part of the debris of the trappean and other primitive rocks, which as a 

 general rule, present but few traces of the serpentine rocks or its derivatives. 

 Syenites and green stone, the equivalents of the eastern mountain range, are 

 found here. 



The grounds are soft and mellow, easily tilled, and highly productive in char 

 acter. It is evident, however, that a continued succession of the wheat crop 

 alone in these lands, must in a few years render them unprofitable for this cul 

 ture, for the reason that the materials from which the soils have been derived do 

 not contain those elements in sufficient amount to insure with certainty a long 

 series of cropping with this grain. The calcareous and phosphatic minerals are 

 limited in quantity, which, as every informed farmer must know, will sooner or 

 later seriously impoverish those lands, unless attended to early, and their grounds 

 kept in condition, either by artificial application of the materials thus annually 

 exhausted, or an intermission of the barley and oats, which will enable them to 

 recover by a natural, and perhaps more profitable process. 



These remarks will apply to the entire range of country included between 

 Puta Creek on the south, and Stony Creek on the north. It would be well for 

 agriculturalists in this part of the State, (those at least who are permanently 

 located there,) to consider this subject well, as a heavy interest, in a pecuniary 

 point of view, attaches itself to this matter. 



This part of the State (and also that on the east side of the river, included 

 within the same parallels,) must become the main wheat producing districts of 

 California. Other portions of the valley sections, though in many instances 

 possessing a soil of superior fertility, cannot be relied upon with certainty for the 

 production of this crop, although those districts will produce both wheat and 

 barley beyond any question whatever. The reason of this is obvious, and it 

 needs but a glance at the geographical positions of each to readily perceive why 

 this is so. The relative position of the coast valleys and plains to the ocean, is 

 such that the moist winds of the latter, with the chilling coldness that usually 

 attend them must, and will, exert a pernicious influence on the wheat in any por 

 tion of them. 



The experience of rigid investigation for many years past in other countries, 

 lead us to the above conclusions, and we should certainly profit by what that 

 practical experience has demonstrated. 



Had we a series of meteorological observations instituted along our valley sec 

 tions, situated in the Coast Mountains, and upon our great interior plains, we 

 should not be left to fall back upon so many of those vague surmises that at the 

 present time forms not only the basis of opinion, but of subsequent action also, 

 relating to the constant discrepancies that arise touching the matter of agricul 

 ture in all its varied departments. But so long as the present system exists, we 

 must expect to suffer from what we now look upon as unaccountable results, when 

 the loss of a crop (save in some half a dozen counties,) is found to occur. When 

 these crops are successful, ample reasons are found to account for the fact why 

 tnuy arc so, the fertility of the soil is made to shoulder and support the weighty 

 fabric, as though no other agent had even the shadow of an existence in such 



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