452 



A.y OLD-FASHIONED COUNTRYSIDE. 



science and the premonitory pangs of retribution. 

 It serves him right! Well he knew, months ago, 

 that the rains would cease and the sunshine come, 

 in which pea-blossoms would swell into fair round 

 pods, turnips wax large, beet-leaves grow purple^ 

 and the whole garden become a dividend-paying in- 

 stitution. The unhappy, gardenless, dilatory, and 

 envious householder can only go out and take note 

 of these omissions, make horticultural resolutions 

 of scope and dignity for another year, buy his vege- 

 tables, and haggle with the basket-laden Chinaman, 

 Happy for him if he has a lawn and flower garden, 

 in which are roses white, creamy, pink, crimson, 

 blooming in all their nameless combinations, until 

 his vegetarian peccadilloes are no more remembered. 



The man who comes to California from some 

 more rigorous climate is usually the one who wor- 

 ships most ardently in the temple of Flora, and 

 plants with broader and more liberal plans for the 

 future. The old cettlers in this quaint country-side 

 never make any effort to utilize the soil and climate 

 to their fullest extent. Years ago oranges, olives, 

 lemons, palms were planted by a few farmers, and 

 they have grown and thriven greatly. But almost 

 everyone else has planted just what he happened 

 to know best, in New England, or New York, or the 

 west, or the south, and so one finds a staid and 

 settled aspect here that hardly another district in 

 all California possesses. One knows at once, with- 

 out a question, that these farmers settled down in 

 '49, and have lived here ever since, and that they 

 are contented and prosperous, so that there is no 

 land to sell, no " boomers " laying out town lots in 

 the quiet little villages, no anxiety to have the rest 

 of the world hear of the region. On the whole, 

 this utter unconsciousness of any existence outside 

 this broad, peaceful valley is the strongest char- 



acteristic of its people. It is within thirty miles 

 of San Francisco, and all around it farms are be- 

 ing " subdivided and put on the market," but along 

 these old lanes the ancient pastures are being set 

 in orchard by the pioneers themselves, and they 

 will reap the returns. Perhaps it is a strong infu- 

 sion of the New England elements that has chiefly 

 developed this refreshingly conservative society, but 

 to whatever cause it may be attributed, it seems 

 likely to long continue to be prosperously old- 

 fashioned and a conspicuous ornament to western 

 America. 



Indeed the district has not the smallest ambition 

 to become suburban and full of cottages, summer 

 boarders from the city, and town-lots built on by 

 young clerks and daily train -goers. Everywhere 

 else, where the distance and natural resources will 

 permit, the one delicious hope of the country-side 

 is to be "discovered" by the newspaper man and 

 the real estate speculator. When these come to 

 southern Alameda, the ancient " Valle de San Jose " 

 of the Mission Fathers, they find that everyone 

 beams with unbroken content, and will not pay 

 five cents for a " boom " that would build a thou- 

 sand new houses a year. Small farms of from ten 

 to forty acres are becoming the rule now, as the old 

 settlers divide them among their children, and their 

 is today less than a hundred acres of land that can 

 be bought in all the region, and that in small, scat- 

 tered parcels. This is an unusual story for Cali- 

 fornia, of which the late Professor Henry Norton 

 of the State Normal school once wrote that "no 

 other State in America was so much for sale from 

 end to end and side to side." For that very reason, 

 this is perhaps the better worth putting on record. 



Charles Howard Shinn. 



Ahviieda Co., California. 



SOME STUDIES OF ROOT-GRAFTING. 



HE PRACTICE of grafting 

 upon pieces of roots origi- 

 nated with Thomas An- 

 drew Knight so long ago as 

 181 1. His first experi- 

 ments were upon pears, 

 but he extended the opera- 

 tion to some stone fruits. 

 Knight supposed that root 

 grafting would prove useful only in the case of rare 

 plants which could not be readily increased by seeds 

 or cuttings. But it has become a widespread prac- 

 tice in the United States for the propagation of va- 



rious fruits, particularly the apple. Its use has in- 

 troduced several knotty problems into our pomology, 

 some of which have been discussed these many 

 years with no apparent hope of solution. 



We ought to be able by this time to arrive at definite 

 conclusions concerning some of these perplexities. And 

 there are, no doubt, facts enough in the possession of 

 nurserymen and fruit-growers to settle them, but there 

 appears to have been no analytical and judicial attempt 

 to record and digest such knowledge. It is the purpose 

 of this essay to classify advantages and disadvantages, 

 in the hope that some definite information may be ob- 

 tained Such personal opinions as I have expressed are 

 the result of much study extending through a consider- 



