440 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



in any other part of the world. The soil and climate are also 

 particularly favorable to the growth of wheat, which unites 

 the valuable qualities of whiteness, dryness, and glutinous- 

 ness, to a greater degree than any other wheat in the world. 

 Our average crops are larger than in any other place where 

 manure is not used extensively. The yield of hops is large, 

 and the facilities for drying them, so as to preserve their 

 strength, are better than in any other land where they are 

 cultivated. Our kitchen vegetables grow to an unparalleled 

 size. Nowhere else have pumpkins been seen to reach two 

 hundred and fifty pounds in weight each, beets one hundred and 

 twenty pounds, white turnips twenty-six pounds, solid-headed 

 cabbages seventy-five pounds, carrots ten pounds, water-mel- 

 ons sixty-five pounds, onions forty-seven ounces, Irish potatoes 

 seven pounds, sweet potatoes fifteen pounds, and so forth. Some 

 cabbages and beets have spontaneously become perennials here, 

 continuing to grow from year to year, and remaining green 

 throughout winter and summer; and many of our kitchen 

 vegetables might be converted into perennials by preventing 

 them from going to seed. 



The abundance, excellence, and variety of our fruit astonish 

 the stranger, though he* may have come from the markets of 

 London or New York, which draw tribute from whole hemi- 

 spheres. No market on the globe surpasses ours in variety, 

 yet only twenty years since we began to import fruit trees di- 

 rect from the Eastern States and Europe. Our mild winters 

 permit the trees to grow during nine or ten months in the 

 year, and they grow more rapidly, and reach maturity more 

 speedily, than in any other country where they are so healthy, 

 and bear so abundantly. The pear and apple trees which were 

 planted by the missionaries thirty or forty years ago, are still 

 in perfect health, and some of them produce as much as a ton 

 of fruit to the tree every year. The apple and pear seem to 

 have found here their most congenial clime. There are no 

 worms in our apples ; no curculios in our plums or cherries ; 



