CALlFORNiA AVOCADO 



ASSOCIATION 



73 



THINGS TO BE EXPECTED 

 Mr. C. P. Taft, Semi-Tropical Fruit Grower, Orange, Cal. 



The role of a prophet is usually rather a risky one. If his 

 predictions come wrong, he is accused of deceiving the people and 

 if right, "Why it's nothing but guess work and anyone with 

 common sense and equal experience could do as well," which is 

 doubtless quite so. 



It may be that I was given this subject (for I did not select 

 it myself) because of a semi-prediction which I made some ten 

 years or so ago at a farmers' institute held in Tustin. At that time 

 very few knew or cared about ahuacate, and those who did 

 thought it unlikely that we could ever grow in California the fine 

 fruit which we have since found adaptable to our climate. I 

 then read what I think was my first paper making particular and 

 enthusiastic mention of the alligator pear as probably a very- 

 greatly-to-be-grown fruit of the future and I ended the article 

 with the interrogatory predicition "Will the next (horticultural) 

 craze be over the alligator pear?" using the word craze, of course, in 

 the sense of greatly aroused interest, with a possible overdoing 

 the matter on the part of some. That prediction, if it may be 

 called one, has been fairly answered in the affirmative; though 

 with possibly one or two exceptions, no one has become unduly 

 excited and the great interest aroused is fully justified by present 

 facts and future prospects. Much of what was then the future 

 is now the past and we find many acres, aggregating thousands 

 of trees planted to the ahuacate, and that these trees will soon 

 be bearing large quantities of marketable fruit is beyond contro- 

 versy. 



Will the market take all that we are likely to raise? I 

 think it will and it is the purpose of this Association to see that 

 the public has no excuse for pleading ignorance of the great 

 privilege which we are placing before it. It has been my duty 

 this season to supply for the Orange County Horticultural Contri- 

 bution to the Panama-Pacific Industrial Exposition, along with 

 other fruits, what was at this stage of the industry a very cred- 

 itable display of ahuacates. Every ten days from July 8th to 

 September 30th I sent a dozen or so ahuacates of the Taft variety, 

 and of my other varieties so long as they lasted. The manager of the 



