68 



1916 ANNUAL REPORT 



The avocado has been an exclusive and elusive foreigner from the 

 tropics; traveling at intervals to our shores in the cold storage seclusion 

 of some big ocean liner; stopping at high priced hotels; dining only a 

 la carte at swell cafes and clubs; attending ten dollar banquets, and 

 appearing, upon occasions, in the homes of the upper ten; the lower mil- 

 lions, for which reason, are either uninformed, or cynical of the gustatory 

 joy in store for them, just as soon as the avocado has been handed its 

 final papers as a naturalized Yankee. 



Though an alien in our land, the avocado is a nearby native North 

 American. It was a precious food of the inhabitants when Columbus 

 came. During a couple of centuries thereafter, many explorers wrote in 

 high praise of it. The earliest known of such writings is the report of 

 Oviedo to Charles V. of Spain. In a lengthy account of the tree, its fruit 

 and uses, he quaintly says: "The Indians guard them well, but apply no 

 work whatever to them, for the chief gardener is God." Guarded by the 

 Indian and gardened by God! This beautiful thought of the avocado but 

 adds to its charm. This was in 1526, since which time this aborignal 

 "staff of life" migrated eastward and westward, to the islands of the 

 Atlantic and of the Pacific, to Spain, France and even to India; and yet, 

 in the fifth century after Columbus, in our own land of good living, so 

 close to its place of nativity, the noble avocado is only beginning to be 

 known! While here in California, where nearly all the treasures of the 

 tropics are being reproduced, an 18-ounce home-grown avocado retailed 

 in the Los Angeles markets, in A. D. 1915, for $1.50! — the price almost 

 suggestive of them being yet in the curio class; and in Monrovia, where 

 grows a sixty-five foot avocado tree, an old residenter recently told me. 

 "he didn't know anything about either the alligator, or the avocado 

 pears, but he'd bet they couldn't beat the Bartlett." 



How came it about that ubiquitous and omniverous Uncle Sam de- 

 prived himself, for so long, of this delectable diet I Oh, why did Sir Walter 

 Raleigh, when taking over to Queen Elizabeth those plebian potatoes, 

 entirely overlook the patrician avocado! 



There are some questions that growers have often asked me rela- 

 tive to "The Hotel and the Avocado." I have always carefully respond- 

 ed, within my scope, knowing how important a place the hotels and cafes 

 now occupy, and will hold, in the expanding realm of the avocado, hence 

 the more formal publicity here given these pointed questions of the prac- 

 tical growers. 



FIRST: What is the proper size of avocado to grow for the hotel 

 trade? In hotels and cafes of the highest class — as yet, alas! the sole 

 places where the fruit is found — ^their service limits itself to, practically, 

 two sizes: the 14 to 16 oz. and the 24 oz.; fruit of the first-mentioned 

 v/eights, constituting, on some tables, one portion and on others, two. The 

 24 oz. is always cut, making two portions. 



This has been crystallized into custom, not as might be supposed, 

 by high cost, but through common sense; it being considered sufficient 

 vegetable fat addition to the modern meal. 



Now, let not the grower of smaller, or larger sizes be at all disap- 



