APPENDIX. 383 



the trade is to allow nothing for the tare, and, therefore, mer- 

 chants have to calculate the price that they pay accordingly. 

 This custom originated many years ago, and has been continued 

 down to the present time. The merchant also lias to lose, in a 

 great degree, the weight of the stems, for, although a portion of 

 the raisins drop off the stems in the process of handling and dry- 

 ii^o) yet many of them remain, and they have to be stripped from 

 the stems at the shipping ports, where they are packed in boxes 

 containing just twenty-eight pounds net, or a quarter of an Eng- 

 lish hundredweight. By far the larger portion of the Yalencia 

 crop goes to England, but the demand for Yalencia raisins has 

 been rapidly growing in the United States and ■ Canada, until, in 

 18Y5, 533,224 boxes out of a total crop of 1,580,000 were con- 

 sumed in the United States. Out of the crop of 1876, however, 

 a larger proportion went to England, owing to the fact that prices 

 in Malaga were much lower than in Denia, and shipments of 

 Yalencia raisins to the English market realized better prices than 

 those which were sent to the United States. The average pro- 

 duction for the last three years has been about a million and a 

 half of boxes, but within ten years has fluctuated between 800,000 

 and 1,600,000. 



" Malaga " raisins are produced within a limited territory in 

 the neighborhood of Malaga, some two or three miles farther 

 south, and principally along the coast of the Mediterranean. A 

 raisin vineyard looks like any other vineyard, except, perhaps, 

 that the vines are pruned closer to the ground, and, consequently, 

 produce less foliage than those in some other countries. Many 

 varieties of grape will not bear this close pruning, but the vine 

 which bears the raisin grape has sufficient vitality to throw out 

 shoots which bear fruit the same season, and the younger a shoot 

 will bear the more perfect the fruit it produces. There are 

 few or no trees in the raisin district, except orange and olive 

 trees, and these, of course, are cultivated. The first impression 

 of an American seeing this country in March, as I did, is that the 

 whole of it would not be worth a thousand dollars. I have seen 

 no country, except, perhaps, the Greek islands, that compares with 

 it in a sterile and forbidding appearance. A range of mountains, 

 the " Sierra Nevada," runs along the coast at a distance of some 



