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eight peaches to the box, regulation size, and weighing on an average 

 twenty-six pounds to the box. We have many that weigh a pound. 

 We raised Heath Clings that weighed nineteen ounces, this year, and our 

 Salways would average half a pound and more. Forty-eight peaches 

 would make a box weighing twenty-six pounds. So you see it was not 

 such very small fruit, taking a six-inch box to hold two tiers. 



Mr. Walton: What I want to know is whether you can raise peaches 

 for half a cent a pound by that plan. 



Mr. Northrup: I don't know. We never have had to sell them for 

 that. The big ones are the ones that sell. The little ones are the ones 

 that break the market down. And there is where the trouble comes. If 

 you will irrigate well, prune well, cultivate well, and thin out to prevent 

 overloading you will find that it will help you out. 



Mr. Block: Would you kindly tell us if you think this extra irriga- 

 tion does not leach out your land? 



Mr. Northrup: No, sir; on the contrary the water is filled with slick- 

 ens, which is carried down along the ditches, and the slickens raise 

 a vast amount of vegetation, and the ditches become filled with weeds, 

 and we turn a big furrow and turn the weeds under. That tends to 

 enrich the ground. And then in the new ditches the weeds spring up 

 again and we turn them under again. 



Mr. Block: Do you find that the increased size of your product is 

 accompanied with any deterioration in flavor? 



Mr. Northrup: Not in the least. Our commission merchants in San 

 Francisco say it is a pleasure to them to handle our fruit, because it is 

 extra in quality and in size both. It has flavor, it has color, it has size. 



A Voice: I come from a slickens country, and our experience in regard 

 to slickens is the reverse. We consider it is poison to the land. 



Mr. Northrup: Wherever we have slickens on our land the weeds 

 grow up spontaneously, and when we turn them under that improves 

 the land. 



A Voice: How far did you have to go for water in your wells? 



Mr. Northrup: All the way from twenty to thirty feet. But when we 

 pump we pump directly from the river or ditch. We use a centrifugal 

 pump. I have heard it said that we would have to turn our wheat fields 

 into fruit. This will not do. Good fruit cannot be raised on ordinary 

 wheat land without irrigation. 



A Voice: I have an orchard on wheat land. I have raised Orange 

 Cling peaches, and on five hundred trees I did not have five boxes that 

 went under two and a half inches in diameter. And they went from 

 that up to three and a,Jialf. And I may say further that the entire 

 county of Sutter raises its orchards on wheat land, and does not have 

 any water to irrigate. But they cultivate thoroughly. 



A Voice: I think that there is a misconception here. I think the 

 gentleman alludes to the wheat lands in the foothills and not in the 

 valleys. I have raised peaches that would weigh a pound and a quarter 

 on wheat land. 



Mr. Northrup: When I referred to wheat land I did not mean bottom 

 land along rivers. But I do not think there is a single orchard between 

 here and Lodi that has ever made a success in raising fruit. When you 

 strike the bottom land of the Cosumnes, or of the Mokelumne, or of the 

 Sacramento River, there you will make a success; but come right up 

 here within two or three miles of Sacramento and I will show you trees 



