AGRICULTURE. 237 



169. Cotton. About two thousand acres are cultivated 

 in cotton in California. The ordinary yield ranges from 250 

 to 500 pounds per acre ; and as the price is twenty cents per 

 pound, the product is much better adapted to shipment for 

 long distances, than wheat at two cents a pound. The ex- 

 pense of making the crop is about $30 per acre, including $3 

 for rent, $2.50 for seed, $2 for planting and cultivating, $20 

 for picking, ginning, and baling, and $2.50 for sundries. As 

 the lowest yield in an ordinary season is $50 per acre, with a 

 good chance for $100, there is a nice margin for profit. The 

 cultivation of cotton has been increasing steadily for the last 

 four years, but its importance for the future depends to a great 

 extent on the irrigation works. When the water is supplied 

 to the San Joaquin Valley, cotton will probably claim a large 

 area as the most profitable crop. 



170. Kitchen Vegetables. The vegetables for the kitchen 

 such as cabbage, cauliflower, beets, parsnips, carrots, rad- 

 ishes, onions, melons, squashes, pumpkins, green peas, string- 

 beans, tomatoes, asparagus, rhubarb, okra, cucumbers, lettuce, 

 garden-egg, and so forth thrive in California, many of them 

 beyond example elsewhere. Cabbages weighing fifteen pounds 

 are wonders in the New York market ; in San Francisco they 

 are common. Whole fields of cabbage-heads, weighing twenty 

 pounds each, have been grown ; and hard, solid heads, with no 

 loose leaves, weighing forty-five and fifty-three pounds each, 

 are on record. One cabbage, which did not make a head, 

 grew to be seven feet wide, throwing out leaves three and a 

 half feet long on each side. In many cases the cabbage has 

 been converted into a perennial, evergreen, tree-like plant, by 

 preventing it from going to seed. Several of these are now 

 growing in the State, with stalks from two to six feet high, 

 and a foliage that grows through winter and summer. 



The largest squash or soft-skin pumpkin produced in Cali- 

 fornia weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, and the vine 

 which bore it had several others weighing over one hundred 



