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air, and we look upon irrigation as a positive advantage. Very many 

 people, until within the last year or two, have said they could grow trees 

 without irrigation just as well as with it. The tree can be grown, but we 

 have failed to produce fruit of high excellence without irrigation. In 

 places along the river beds we have soils similar to those of the gentleman's 

 who asked me the question. In his rich river bottoms they grow fruit of 

 the same kind without irrigation; but on those sloping hillsides, where 

 there is good drainage, we get so much better success by irrigation with all 

 kinds of fruit — that so far as the olive is concerned I will not except that. 

 As to the quality I will not pretend to be a judge, because I am not grow- 

 ing that fruit for profit. 



[Vice-President Johnston in the chair.] 



Mr. Cooper: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: As a matter of fact 

 all that I know has already been published, so that I can have but little 

 to say. Before I commenced in any very extended way olive culture in 

 Santa Barbara County, I purchased all the literature that there was to be 

 found in Europe, in the Spanish, the Italian, and the French languages, 

 spending a good deal of money in so doing; afterwards, not being able to 

 read in the Spanish or Italian, I employed a professor from St. Louis whom 

 I brought out to my place at considerable expense, to translate these books; 

 however, very soon after that I found that all the literature that was really 

 worth knowing, was in the French language, which I could read, and I 

 stopped any further consideration of either the Italian or the Spanish books. 

 I observed, also, that every author had a different name for these olives; 

 there is scarcely any three Spanish writers on the subject that give the 

 same names; the same way with the Italian and with the French. There 

 are no names for olives, practically speaking, because I was unable to 

 judge between these, which was right, and which was wrong; I made up 

 my mind from samples I received from the high table land around Nice, 

 having sent an agent to visit the south of Europe during the olive-making 

 season, at great expense, and employed an interpreter in Paris who could 

 speak Spanish, French, and Italian. They traveled all through the olive 

 districts, and my agent gathered for me samples of the limbs cut from 

 different trees, samples of the pomace during the process of making, sam- 

 ples of the oil as it ran from the press, samples of the apparatus used, the 

 drawings of all the mills, samples of the reed cloths in which they were 

 pressed, of which Mr. Dondero has spoken; and I satisfied my mind before 

 going into it very extensively, that the Mission olive grown in Santa Bar- 

 bara was exactly the same thing as grown on the high table lands of Nice. 

 The branches, the leaves, the olives, and the insects that were on the 

 branches, when sent to me by express from Paris, w T ere exactly the same 

 as they were in Santa Barbara, so that I went on with the Mission olive, 

 and am going on still. I plant about two thousand trees every winter, and 

 I have now in preparation to plant about seven thousand trees, then I shall 

 stop. 



Mr. Butler: Is it not understood that the olive you speak of, grown in 

 Europe, was for the best oil? 



Mr. Cooper: It was the olive fro'm which they made the oil, and which 

 a great many told me was the best oil made in the world. 



Mr. Butler: Have you had any reliable information from that country 

 to change your opinion since then ? 



Mr. Cooper: I have not; but I am like the rest of you — I am very anx- 

 ious to learn, and I enjoyed very greatly this morning the essay of Mr. 

 Charles Dondero, because we have not arrived at perfection yet by a long 

 ways. 



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