ORANGE CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 221 



This is undoubtedly true in some localities, like the Nile, where 

 floods run over fertile bottoms, gathering richness from the rich 

 soils that they pass over. So, too, of the Mississippi and other 

 streams of fertile surroundings, but here our washes come from 

 the sterile mountains and beds of dry sand, and they cannot add 

 fertilizers by depositing that which has no fertility. Clear well 

 and spring water are fertilizers, for it is proven that they contain, 

 as they necessarily must, all the mineral and salt substances 

 which are in the soil or rock by which they are surrounded, for 

 water dissolves all these substances; whereas rain, being the 

 product of evaporation, pure water, is entirely free from lime, 

 potash, magnesia, etc., and can only gather a small percentage 

 of these substances in its hurried motion and contact with the 

 soil. That well water has all the necessary elements of plant 

 life has been proven by maize, wheat and oats having been 

 grown by using well water, often renewed, instead of soil for 

 their roots, and these plants fulfilled every stage of development 

 from sprouting, growing leaves and stocks and a normal quan- 

 tity of seed or grain. To give a detailed description of this 

 water culture would occupy too much space. 



Soil is a mechanical necessity to a plant, to hold it in a fixed, 

 upright condition. It is also a storehouse for its ash and salt 

 ingredients. Spring and well water can supply all deficiencies, 

 if any are in the soil, by what it has in solution, and, too, by its 

 solvent power. Irrigation can be excessive. It can make the 

 grape watery, insipid and inferior for wine. Winter irrigation 

 will probably give us every benefit that water can give, and there 

 are very few places but what could have winter irrigation. As 

 my neighbor, Gen. Stoneman, says, "Use your land for your 

 reservoir." It will cost nothing in the making. It is your bank, 

 which will honor the draft of the vine when summer comes, as 

 it is needed. 



I have shown, from ten years' experience, that my vineyard, 

 which has never been irrigated, has yielded grapes all that time 

 in paying quantities. It is yet healthy and productive. It is 

 equally sure, to my mind, that with winter irrigation it would 

 have yielded larger crops ; and who can say when the time may 

 come that by reason of some element of the grape vine being 

 exhausted it will not go into a decline, and how long that time 

 may be. Such is the case in some vineyards in Sonoma, and 

 replanting is becoming necessary. It is believed by many that 

 they have there the phylloxera, while others believe that the 

 dead and diseased portion of some of their vines is simply the 

 result of the wearing out of the soil, of the exhaustion of some 

 necessary element of vine life. It is said, too, that the phyl- 

 loxera does not exist where irrigation is practiced. 



That for the first years of the growth of a vineyard irrigation 



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