242 
AMERICAN POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
necessary. The usual winter rains, when supplemented with reasonable irri- 
gation have always produced results satisfactory to the fruit grower, but 
during the past two years such unusual conditions have obtained that the 
grower found himself somewhat unprepared to meet them— especially is this 
true of the present season. 
At the close of last season (1898) Mr. Geo. C. Roeding, of Fresno, advised 
me that he would not be able to report on the “Tropical and Sub-Tropical 
Fruits” of his section. This declination to report the great raisin and fig 
industries of the State is exceedingly to be regretted; the more so as there 
is no person more familiar with the wonderful development of the raisin 
and fig conditions than is Mr. Roeding. 
The continued ill health of Mr. J. S. Calkins, of Pomona, Cal., made it 
physically impossible for him to perform his duty as a member of the Com- 
mittee and he asked to have his place filled by another appointment and 
after repeated trials no one could be induced to make a report. 
Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and adjacent localities represented 
on the Committee by Leslie F. Gay, of Piru City, is as yet unreported, 
although great pleasure was expressed by Mr. Gay in being able to report 
the entire district. 
I cannot adequately express my regret that no report has been made, as 
no section of the State has made a better record in lemon culture than por- 
tions of the territory under consideration; its range of products, considering 
the latitude, is somewhat remarkable, the section immediately under Mr. 
Gay’s observation having never been known to have frost sufficient to in- 
jure citrus trees or even plants. 
To enable me to make a report on the “Tropical and Sub-Tropical Fruits” 
of North California would require me to travel about two thousand (2,000) 
miles and to avoid it, I called to my assistance Judge John C. Gray, of 
Oroville, whose report on the fig industry is appended. 
Mr. S. S. Boynton, of Oroville, reports the condition of the orange and 
lemon industry in the same section, which I also append hereto. 
THE FIG IN BUTTE COUNTY. 
REPORT BY JOHN C. GRAY, OROVILLE. 
In 1889 I set out an orchard of fifty acres of White Adriatic fig. I selected 
foot-hill land, covered with a large growth of yellow pine and white oak 
trees, many of them two feet in diameter. There were also patches covered 
with quite a dense growth of chapparal. The soil was that usually found 
along the base of the Sierras, where the elevation is from five hundred te 
one thousand feet, and seemed to be a reddish loam, mixed with some gravel. 
Such land when cleared, and not cultivated, yields a small quantity of grass, 
fit for grazing purposes, about three months in the year. But cultivate the 
land at the proper season of the year, and it will yield a good crop of grain 
or hay every two years. I burned the oak stumps, but left the pine and in 
two years they had rotted so much that the plow took them all out. 
Bedrock appeared at the surface in a number of places, but It seemed to be 
set edgewise, so that it was an easy matter to sink a crowbar into the 
land its full length, even close by the side of the bedrock. The trees were 
Set thirty feet apart, as the tree grown on this kind of land does not attain 
