176 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 
San Joaquin, and 14 in Sacramento. In 1860, the reported 
average was 45 bushels in San Luis Obispo, 35 in Yolo and 
Calaveras, 34 in Placer, 30 in Sonoma, Stanislaus, Yuba, and 
Amador, 27 in Santa Cruz, 26 in Fresno and Tulare, 25 in Te- 
hama, Butte, Humboldt, and Napa, 24 in Nevada, 20 in San 
Diego, Santa Clara, and Shasta, 18 in San Joaquin, and 15 in 
Sacramento. 
In 1855, the worst year for wheat we have ever known in 
California, when both smut and rust raged from Siskiyou to 
San Diego, the average crop,of the state was put down as 15 
bushels per acre. Of 12,233 acres sown in Sonoma county, 
only 3,500 were harvested; and of 2,490 sown in Marin, all 
but 462 went untouched by the reaper. 
In Ohio, the average wheat-crop is about sixteen bushels per 
rere; and in England, with all their manuring and careful 
ploughing, twenty-one bushels. In California, no manure is 
applied; the soil is ploughed but once in most fields, and there 
is little rest for the land by rotation of crops. 
It is a singular fact that where wheat is sown under oak- 
trees, the stalks are usually thicker and taller, and the grain 
more abundant, than in other places. This may be owing to 
the facts that the trees protect the ground under them from 
the frost, and also retain the moisture; and that while the 
country was in the hands of the Mexicans, the cattle had pos- 
session of the valleys, and, collecting under the trees in the 
summer-time, their manure enriched the soil there. The roots 
of the oak-trees in the valleys do not run along the surface of 
the ground, but go deeper for moisture, and thus the plough 
can run up to the trunk, and put all the land in order for grain. 
The principal wheat-growing counties in the state are San 
Joaquin, which in 1860 produced 895,000 bushels; Napa, with 
652,000; Yolo, with 459,000; Alameda, with 440,000; Santa 
Clara, with 400,000; Yuba, with 223,000; Santa Cruz, with 
243,000; Sonoma, with 275,000; and Contra Costa, with 
450,000. 
It is almost impossible that there should ever be an entire 
