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trees. One place about a thousand feet above Oroville they grew trees from 

 the seed and fruited in seven years; but there was a Frenchman there and 

 he made them bear very rapidly. In the valley, here in Chico, there are a 

 number of trees bearing, notwithstanding we had snow on the ground last 

 winter for two solid weeks. I was editor of a daily newspaper here and 

 took particular pains not to say anything about it. There is no harm to 

 tell it now because our orange trees were not all killed, but at that time I 

 wouldn't give a two-cent piece for all the oranges in this county. At Oro- 

 ville, and in our place in the foothills, there were three winters in succes- 

 sion during which there were only three nights the entire winter when we 

 had any frost at all and that was during the last week in December and 

 the last week in January, at an elevation of three hundred feet above the 

 valley; about six hundred feet above sea level. At Biggs aud Gridley, as 

 you pass along the railroad, they have orange trees bearing finely. At a 

 place across the river on the Colusa side, orange trees have borne finely for 

 several years, and this year, after such a winter as we had last year, it is 

 an astonishing fact that the trees here in Chico and everywhere else are 

 loaded with fruit. Now we don't claim that Chico is particularly an orange 

 region, but the foothills we claim are equal to Riverside, Los Angeles, or 

 any other place, not that I say Butte County, but from Shasta to San Diego, 

 it is all California, and it is all a matter of locality. Get into a sheltered 

 nook anywhere along the Sierras, and you can grow such oranges as these 

 seedlings, and in the most sheltered places you can grow the most tender 

 varieties of the budded plants. I have lemons also this last season, and 

 although we had no snow on my place at all, when they had it for two 

 weeks on the ground here, I did have ice half an inch thick and the ground 

 frozen six inches deep night after night. I say I wouldn't have given any- 

 thing for the trees at all and thought the last citrus fair had been held in 

 Butte County, but even the lemon trees at my place after such a season as 

 that were not killed; the outer limbs were killed but the stocks were alive, 

 and are now coming on and spreading finely. I had thirty-two lime trees 

 on my place; they were killed to the ground and at least half of them are 

 sprouting out and have sprouts on three feet high. That tells the whole 

 story, gentlemen; any of you that want to go into orange culture need not 

 go to San Diego to do it. I would not advise you to go to the top of Shasta, 

 but simply to any sheltered nook along these foothills in Butte County and 

 in Tehama — all along this coast. It is a remarkable fact that after the 

 frost of last winter, the orange trees are more loaded this year than they 

 were last. Another remarkable fact is that our fruit is ripe six weeks before 

 the fruit of Lower California. Another thing, my next door neighbor was 

 the first man to make raisins in America, and he exhibited at the World's 

 Fair at Paris, in 1877. 



Mr. F. A. Kimball: I have to inform the gentleman that my brother at 

 National City made in 1874 over eight hundred pounds of as fine raisins 

 as was ever raised in any country. 



Mr. Wood: The gentleman I refer to exhibited raisins in Paris in 1877, 

 and he had made raisins for ten or eleven years before that. 



Mr. F. A. Kimball: These oranges exhibited are in an exceedingly 

 unripe state, not nearly gotten their growth. 



Mr. Wood: We do not say they are ripe, but we say they are six weeks 

 riper than yours. 



Mr. F. A. Kimball: I think you have the advantage of nearer three 

 months in ripeness: we won't have a ripe orange in San Diego until the 

 very last of March. This orange only has to be examined by the side of 

 a fine orange to show its character, and if it is approaching anywhere near 



