46 PROCEEDINGS OP THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



remember, with his views. The following is an extract from an essay 

 read by him before the Twelfth State Fruit- Growers' Convention held 

 in Fresno in 1889: "One fact to which I wish to call attention, 

 and a very important one, in relation to the necessity of caprification, 

 is that the leaves of all the fig trees grown from seed and obtained from 

 Thurber are identical in type." The orchard had almost passed out 

 of my mind, and in fact I thought it had been dug up and destroyed 

 long before I succeeded in establishing the Blastophaga, when my 

 attention was attracted to a fig orchard near Loomis, while seated in 

 an observation car of a train Eastward bound. It dawned on me, how- 

 ever, that what I saw was the remnant of the old Maslin orchard in 

 which, in spite of the fact that it had been sadly neglected for a number 

 of years, many of the trees were alive and growing. The insect had 

 already been introduced into the capri figs of my friend, D. Van Len- 

 nep, of Auburn, and he kindly consented to send infested figs to this 

 orchard at the proper time. After the insect became established, I 

 visited the orchard several times and made a careful and complete 

 record of it, and although there was not one third of it standing, seven 

 eighths of the trees were capri or wild figs, and hardly two of these are 

 alike, entirely upsetting the ideas advanced by Mr. Maslin in 1889. 



Another prediction made by Mr. Maslin read as follows : ' ' We are on 

 the threshold of entering upon a great industry. Fig culture, I con- 

 fidently believe, will in five years rank in importance with that of 

 . the raisin, prune and grape." You were right, old friend, but you 

 miscalculated the time, for if you had said twenty years instead of 

 five you would have been about correct. 



When I demonstrated that our little friend, the Blastophaga, had 

 concluded to dwell with us and harvested my first crop of figs of any 

 importance in 1901, I thought I had accomplished something which 

 would benefit California, for I had expended thousands of dollars in 

 my investigations, and had taken care of a sixty-acre fig orchard with- 

 out deriving one cent from it for a period of fourteen years. I had 

 counted too securely on my success and soon learned that, even after 

 I had demonstrated that California Smyrna figs were all I represented 

 them to be, the public was doubtful. Many thought the trees would 

 not bear and that the insect would soon disappear. My experience is 

 only a repetition of what others have been compelled to pass through 

 before their efforts received recognition. To-day, many of the old trees 

 of the San Francisco Bulletin importation of 1882, which have been 

 allowed to grow practically forgotten and uncared for, are producing 

 fine figs, much to the surprise and mystification of their owners, who 

 had never seen figs on them before. 



Do you know what the general public says of me at home? That 

 my orchard never bears; that Smyrna figs are a failure in the San 



