154 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



Perkins' chief characteristic was his grasp of the 

 advantage of long-distance publicity. At the Paris 

 World's Fair of 1867 he exhibited his seeds, won 

 a silver medal over eighty-four competitors and pre- 

 sented the collection to the Imperial Garden of Ac- 

 climatization of France. In 1868 he presented col- 

 lections of one hundred and fifty kinds of California- 

 grown seeds to each of four European and Asiatic 

 potentates. 



From the efforts of such pioneers, seed-growing 

 made a good start. From 1870 onward, both grow- 

 ing and trade distribution were advanced and many 

 seed farms were established, chiefly from Santa Clara 

 southward in the coast valleys. In the eighties the 

 attention of eastern seedsmen was arrested not only 

 by the offerings of California commercial growers 

 but by their own experience. When they offered 

 prizes for the best products from seeds they sold, 

 most of them were captured by Californians and they 

 were thus compelled to conclude that California was 

 the best place to let contracts to secure well-devel- 

 oped and strong seeds for their trade. Thus by the 

 efforts of local commercial growers and distributors 

 and by direct contracts with eastern distributors, seed- 

 growing in California came, as the decades passed, 

 to be a great business, until in 1910, by the valua- 

 tions of the United States Census, the production 

 of vegetable and flower seeds constituted 42 per cent 

 of the total value of the seed product of the United 

 States in those lines. 



In recent years, owing to the interference with 



