228 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



ripe, will be beaten down by the hail, as has happened in Europe 

 and the Atlantic States. On only one occasion, within my 

 knowledge or reading, has it happened that the grain has been 

 " lodged " or beaten down by rain, and that was at Suscol and 

 Napa in 1860 ; and the damage then was slight. 



161. Cost. The richest grain land of the State, that in 

 the valleys near San Francisco Bay, ha been cropped for 

 many years without rest or rotation, and the large yields have 

 become exceptional ; and now thirty bushels to the acre is 

 more of a rarity than forty was fifteen years ago. The average 

 wheat crop of the State was about seventeen bushels per acre 

 in 1867, eighteen in 1868, sixteen in 1869, thirteen in 1870, 

 and nine in 1871. In the counties bordering on San Francisco 

 the yield is considerably larger, but the average for the State 

 is reduced by the results in the San Joaquin Valley, where 

 large areas have been cultivated in a shallow and cheap style, 

 and a dry and not very strong soil. Gang ploughs are used, 

 usually two or five in a gang, sometimes six, eight, or even 

 ten, each cutting a furrow ten or twelve inches wide, and 

 four or six inches deep. A span of horses is required for each 

 plough in the gang, one driver for the entire team. Frequent- 

 ly a machine sower and harrow are attached behind the 

 ploughs, and thus at one movement the land is broken, sown, 

 harrowed, and prepared for its first harvest. The lightness of 

 the soil, the lack of a sod, and absence of stones, bushes, and 

 trees, permits the reduction of the land from its wild state to 

 cultivation at very little expense that is, after abundant 

 rains have come to soften the earth. 



A sulky gang with two ploughs, each cutting twelve inches, 

 drawn by six horses, will dispatch four acres per day ; while a 

 five-gang plough, each cutting ten inches, drawn by eight or 

 ten horses, will dispatch eight acres in a day, only one man 

 being required in each case. The cost per acre of ploughing 

 large fields is variously estimated at from forty cents to one 

 dollar per acre to the farmer provided with horses and gang- 



