30 



THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS^ CONVENTION. 



going to help place the walnut industry on as stable a basis as is the 

 citrus industry to-day, and I look forward to the day when we shall 

 have orchards of grafted varieties where there will be an average pro- 

 duction in the orchard of at least 100 pounds to the tree. To-day. in 

 a seedling walnut orchard, it varies all the way from 5 pounds to a 

 few exceptional trees with 100 pounds. Perhaps the average would be 

 between 40 and 50 pounds. 



Eliminating, then, the proposition of blight altogether, is it not 

 reasonable to suppose that by proper and judicious selection we could 

 get grafted varieties which would produce, even though they did blight 

 to some extent, walnuts to the extent of 100 pounds or more to the tree. 

 We have to-day blight resistant walnuts which are producing desirable- 

 walnuts of 200 pounds to the tree. I do not think the walnut industry 

 is a thing of the past, or that it has seen its best days, but I think that 

 the walnut industry is just coming into its own, and that the time will 

 come in a few years when the walnut industry will be on a more stable 

 foundation than ever, and that the output, instead of decreasing from 

 year to 3^ear, will continue to increase until it will outstrip all known 

 previous production. 



The President next introduced 0. E. Bremner, of the Quarantine 

 Division of the State Horticultural Commission, who presented a paper 

 upon the grape industry, as follows : 



THE PRESENT AND FUTURE STATUS OF OUR GRAPE 



INDUSTRY. 



By O. E. bremner, of Sonoma County. 



If the predictions of the pessimistic experts of grape culture, uttered 

 some five years ago, as to the conditions at that time, and what was to 

 happen in the near future, had been correct, we would find our grape 

 growers in about the same dilemma that to-day confronts the pear 

 orchardist ; but a prosperity marking the degree of their error, and 

 by this contrast showing to the highest advantage the present status 

 of the industry, in spite of phjdloxera, Anaheim, and all the other 

 diseases that grapes are heir to, has placed us beyond the vagaries of 

 the past to a position well nigh impregnable, and California has to-day 

 a greater acreage of grapes than ever before, and there will be planted 

 this year more vines than in any year previously. 



The ultimate success of our grape industry must be attributed to 

 the spirit which pervaded the men, who, having faith in our California 

 soil and climatic conditions, were willing to risk something in experi- 

 menting. It may be, by introducing the new varieties of grapes from 

 Europe, we also brought in the phylloxera and other less disastrous 

 diseases ; yet the same men who sought most earnestly to establish these 

 European varieties were just as persistent in working out the problem 

 of resistancy. And although we are profiting by their mistakes, other 

 mistakes are being made and will continue to be made. Still we feel 

 that the future of the industry is assured, if the prospective planters 

 will not repeat these experiments, but using the facts now before them, 

 plant quality and quality only. This is the one point and sole theme of 



