76 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



choice products of nature. This can be eliminated from the orange and 

 render the fruit insipid and valueless. We must be careful in the selec- 

 tion of stock and bud so that we shall draw toward this noble fruit 

 and gift of nature the happy union of staminate and blended qualities 

 that award the halo of ambrosial excellence." This is especially true 

 of the navel orange. 



The case is a clear one that northern California offers a very large 

 field for the growth of the orange, lemon, and pomelo, if the knowledge 

 of this industry now within the reach of all is intelligently applied at 

 the beginning and continued during the life of the orchard. The main 

 points to be followed are, plant only typical navels, in any soil that will 

 give room for the growth and increase of the root system ; begin to add 

 fertilizing material early, cultivate constantly and deep, and irrigate 

 deep enough to supply the whole root system with moisture, adding 

 yearly humus-producing materials, either in the form of stable manure 

 or green cover crops, or both, using liberally commercial fertilizers, and 

 doing all these things so faithfully that the tree never for an hour 

 suffers for the lack of this food. These things faithfully performed 

 and a citrus grove will never fail to pay large returns on the invest- 

 ment in northern California. This is now being done in Porterville, 

 Lindsay, Fair Oaks, Oroville and its colonies. 



Colonel Weinstock once said, in speaking of the influence of horti- 

 culture in this State, that the people who produce the luxuries of life 

 have a higher degree of civilization and live on a higher plane of enjoy- 

 ment than those who produce the necessities of life. They love the 

 good and the beautiful. Art, science, and literature flourish among 

 such a people, and they become, if not always the originators of all the 

 forces which improve the condition of the human race, the disseminators 

 of all these forces. He referred to the French nation, which has been 

 eminently the producer of the luxuries of life. "Her literature has 

 been to the English what Aaron was to Moses," says Macaulay. Her 

 university was the first great intellectual center of Europe. Scholars 

 by the thousand have flocked to it from all over the Avorld. so that 

 through its influence, knowledge was kept alive and disseminated, so 

 that, in one sense, the French university was the mother of all that were 

 subsequently founded throughout the world. The foremost historian 

 of the nineteenth century has said, "There is hardly any great idea, 

 hardly any great principle of civilization which has not had to go 

 through France to be disseminated." California, so similar to France 

 in so many of its natural aspects of climate, soil, and nature of its 

 productions, is already rising to that higher plane of civilization which 

 may become to the other people of this continent, if not to the whole 

 world, what France has been to Europe. Shall we claim too much for 

 the influence of the orange that it has done and is still doing this work 

 of a higher civilization? Recently some writer in Oregon entered into 

 a very learned dissertation on the relative values of the apple and the 

 orange. The former he placed among the necessities of life, the latter 

 only a luxury. Some California journalist in a broad and generous 

 spirit, such as must prevail where the orange grows, has rescued the 

 apple from that low place and elevated it to a position wmere it belongs 

 among the luxuries, and luxuries are necessities when man reaches the 

 higher plane of noble living. 



