THE ORANGE IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA 425 



famous for its orange product? Several good reasons can be ad- 

 duced. In the first place a disposition toward wider planting did 

 at one time arise and quickly subsided. In the later seventies when 

 the general rush to fruit growing, which has resulted in the present 

 vast extension of the interest, began, citrus fruits were not over- 

 looked. There was a sharp demand for orange trees. Southern 

 California nurseries had a large overstock of trees budded on China 

 lemon roots which southern California planters had learned to 

 despise as forcing excessive growth of tree and large, coarse fruit. 

 The natural tendency of such a root, exaggerated by excessive irri- 

 gation in the nursery, gave a stem as thick as a broom stick and 

 higher than a man in a few months' time, and these soft mon- 

 strosities were sent north by carloads, by astute tree speculators, 

 and sold to unwary planters, who thought they were getting a 

 great deal for their money. Such trees were planted in all sorts 

 of situations and their broad leaves made a fine display as soon as 

 planted. There were fond anticipations of evergreen orchards 

 everywhere from the swamps to the hillsides. Then came the cold 

 winter of 1878-9. The temperature in places reasonably situated 

 was not very low not lower than is frequently encountered in 

 southern California and not low enough to injure well placed old 

 trees, though it did destroy some ill-placed ones and helped to 

 define suitable situations for citrus culture in the north as such 

 temperatures have also defined them at the south. But the degree 

 reached was fatal to those soft trees on a lemon foundation almost 

 everywhere, and the disappointment of the new planters who based 

 calculations upon them, discouraged them from farther efforts to- 

 ward citrus culture for some time. It was not a logical conclusion 

 because a careful inquiry made after the frosts in 1879 elicited 

 careful written statements from sixty-nine orange growers, living 

 in thirty counties and fully justified this conclusion, which was at 

 that time published : "this mass of testimony shows that orange 

 growing is no longer an experiment in the north, and that, not- 

 withstanding the severe frosts of such winters as this, orange and 

 lemon trees can be profitably cultivated' in nearly every county in 

 the State, and by selecting favorable localities, no district, except 

 it be situated, in the high Sierra, need be without these most beau- 

 tiful and useful fruits." 



But there was another and more logical reason why the well 

 suited lands in the central part of the State were not at that time 

 given to citrus fruit culture. Citrus fruits require irrigation every- 

 where ; deciduous fruits, including the grape, do not require irri- 

 gation except in places of shallow soil or light rainfall. Without 

 waiting for irrigation facilities then, hundreds of thousands of acres 

 of deep valley loams were immediately available for the planting 

 of deciduous fruits. The growers understood these fruits, while 



