AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 135 



it has been retained since that date by a product 

 of about one-fifth of all the barley grown in the 

 United States. This supremacy becomes intelligible 

 when it is understood that in California barley stands 

 not only for potable virtues, which are now at least 

 temporarily obscured except from the point of view 

 of exports, but stands also largely for oats and corn, 

 as will be cited presently. 



Barley was the chief bread grain of mankind in 

 most ancient times. It is interesting, however, to 

 remember that though barley did consent to go 12,000 

 feet high on the Himalayas, and north to Scotland 

 on the map of Europe, it always manifested prefer- 

 ence for semi-tropical salubrity and was the chief 

 bread grain around the Mediterranean until the an- 

 cient Romans brought wheat from Egypt and took 

 to feeding the barley to their horses as they are do- 

 ing in Italy and Spain to the present day. The 

 Spaniards brought barley with them to Lower Cali- 

 fornia in 1697 and to our California in 1769. Bar- 

 ley reached the Atlantic Coast about a century earlier, 

 but fell into disfavor because it only yielded about 

 twenty bushels to the acre and only then on land 

 rich, early, warm, and mellow; while in California 

 it yielded incredibly, even under the rude husbandry 

 of the padres. At the East farmers grew oats more 

 extensively, in California the movement was reversed, 

 for barley was easier because of favoring soil and 

 climatic conditions. 



At the first fair ever held in California, which 

 was in San Francisco in 1851, a sample of barley 



