160 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
wet winter. Most of the level land in Los Angeles, San Ber- 
nardino, and San Diego counties, is sandy and dry, and very 
little of it is cultivated. Irrigation is necessary for fruit, vines, 
and vegetables. Wheat and barley do not produce well. Los 
Angeles is the principal grape district in the state; the largest 
vineyards are planted in the bottom-lands of the Los Angeles, 
San Gabriel, and Santa Ana Rivers, where the soil is almost 
pure sand: and yet vineyards which have been in bearing 
twenty-five years, and have never been manured, are now as 
productive as ever. Allow a stream of water to run twenty- 
four hours through a field, and at the end of that time the bot- 
tom of the ditch will contain nothing but white sand, all the 
earthy particles in the soil having been dissolved and carried 
away. At the Monte the San Gabriel River sinks, and, after 
flowing two or three miles under-ground, reappears. The 
place where it sinks is very moist, covered with abundant 
vegetation, and, after Russian River valley, is the best district 
in the state for maize. 
§ 130. Agricultural Produce.—California has 1,000,000 acres 
of land in cultivation, about six-tenths of which are used for 
growing grains and roots employed as food for men and do- 
mestic animals. Of these grains and roots in 1860 (the agri- 
cultural statistics for which year were more fully reported than 
those of 1861) the following amounts were grown, namely: 
5,700,000 bushels of barley; 5,000,000 of wheat; 1,500,000 
of oats; 1,500,000 of potatoes; 500,000 of maize ; 65,000 of 
beans; 55,000 of peas; 55,000 of sweet potatoes; 50,000 of 
buckwheat, and 40,000 of rye, making an aggregate of 14,- 
470,000 bushels—an average of twenty-four bushels to the 
acre, and, estimating the population of the state at 400,000, 
an average of thirty-eight bushels to the person. I purposely 
omit the consideration of all articles not enumerated in the 
list, either because we have no statistics, or because the inser- 
tion would serve rather to confuse than to instruct. We grow 
very few roots of the turnip kind as food for cattle. 
Examining, then, the amounts of the crops above mentioned 
