AND WINE MAKING. 173 



three years. Grapes have steadily advanced in price 

 since 1876, at the rate of $2 per ton each year, bringing 

 the last season from $15 to $25 per ton, and large cellars 

 of wine have been sold at 25 cents per gallon. 



The Phylloxera, as yet, is not found outside of Sonoma 

 Co., where a few vineyards have been more or less in- 

 jured. It does not make the rapid progress ascribed to 

 it in Europe and, I believe, has not yet appeared here in 

 the winged form. I believe it is attributable to old age, 

 bed-rock, or hard-pan near the surface, and exhausted 

 soil, whereby the vine becomes impoverished, and in that 

 condition it is just as natural for it to be attacked by 

 some parasite or insect as an impoverished animal is to 

 become covered with vermin. 



It is estimated that there are 40,000,000 acres of land 

 in this State well adapted to viticulture, and the time is 

 not far distant when the vineyard product will exceed 

 all the other resources of the State combined. 



If the industry be not stifled by Congressional legisla- 

 tion, whoever lives a half a century hence, will find the 

 grapes of California in every city of the Union ; her rai- 

 sins supplying the whole Western Hemisphere ; her wines 

 in every mart of the globe, and then, with her golden 

 shores, her sunny clime, her vine-clad hills and plains, 

 will California, indeed, be the Vineland of the world. 



