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instances it is more imperative than it is in the case of the 

 grower of oranges and lemons. 



It is doubtful if there can be found anywhere in the 

 world a more intelligent and enterprising class of men 

 engaged in any form of agriculture than those who are in 

 the business of fruit growing in California. Many of them 

 were men of large affairs in the East and they have sought 

 to apply to the fruit industry in this state the energy, in- 

 telligence, and enterprise that gave them conspicuous suc- 

 cess in other lines of business. They are moreover respon- 

 sive in an unusual degree to suggestion and instruction 

 when it comes from a source that has some claims to 

 authority; but they are agreed that the problems which 

 confront them are too great to be solved by individual or 

 even community effort. Even the owner of a large ranch 

 cannot maintain a laboratory on his grounds and he cannot 

 afford to convert a considerable part of his property into 

 an experiment station where various theories and sugges- 

 tions may be worked out to some ultimate conclusion; and 

 if that is true of the large grower, the helplessness of the 

 owner of a small ranch is the more apparent. 



The citrus fruit growers of California must spend not 

 less than $6,000,000 a year on fertilizers ; but they are not at 

 all sure that this money is spent wisely. They experiment 

 with different things from year to year, and it is not easy 

 to find any two who pursue exactly the same method or who 

 are agreed as to what is the best system. 



Take the matter of frost protection as another illustra- 

 tion. Last winter was the most severe the citrus belt in 

 California and Arizona has experienced for twenty years; 

 fully 10,000 carloads of oranges and lemons were destroyed 

 by cold or damaged so that they were marketed with loss 

 instead of profit. The loss was at least $5,000,000 to the 

 growers; and to a considerable extent that loss was un- 

 doubtedly preventable. But here again there is need of 

 careful, thorough, scientific study of the problem such as 

 the university can give. Much has been done already in 



