FRUIT GROWING IN CALIFORNIA. 
39 
Santa Clara Co. has the largest horse farm in the world. 
,, „ Cherries have netted over £260 an acre in 
one year. 
,, „ has 16,624 horses, 25,197 cattle, 2,972 sheep. 
,., „ has the largest University (Stanford’s), with 
an endowment of £3,000,000. 
In „ ,, there is not a month during the year when 
some kind of fruit does not ripen in the 
open air. 
„ ,, has the lowest rate of taxation of any county 
in California save one—Yolo County. 
No other section of the world produces the same number of 
varieties of fruit as are grown in Santa Clara County. 
The number of trees in Santa Clara County in 1896 were as 
follows:—Apple 44,840; Apricot 535,099; Cherry 159,098; 
Fig 2,241; Lemon 1,554 ; Nectarine 894 ; Olive 17,886 ; Orange 
I, 835; Peach 405,731 ; Pear 144,877 ; Plum 45,562 ; Prune 
2,961,114 ; Quince 1,308 ; Almond 24,050 ; and English Walnut 
II, 672. 
No paper or papers ever written can express one half of the 
charms of the ideal country of California, or reveal its beauties, 
its glories and charms, as a fruit-growing district, as a health 
resort, as a centre of industry, or as an earthly paradise wherein 
one can reside, and spend the last few years of life, after the 
struggles and toils of many years of hard labour, worry, and 
trouble—a place for the poet, the artist, the novelist, the 
naturalist, the botanist, and in fact any who desire to see the 
beauties of nature revealed and expounded. 
It may be well for me to reproduce the following prose gem 
by the late talented Bayard Taylor, whom death, alas ! deprived 
of ever realising the fruition of his hopes. This is what he 
wrote :—“ Then let me purchase a few acres on the lowest slope 
of these mountains, overlooking the valley and with a distant 
gleam of the bay. Let me build a cottage, embowered in Acacia 
and Eucalyptus and the tall spires of the Italian Cypress. Let 
me leave home when the Christmas holidays are over, and enjoy 
the balmy Januarys and Februarys, the heavenly Marches and 
Aprils of my remaining years here, returning only when May 
shall have brought beauty to the Atlantic shores. Here shall 
my Roses outbloom those of Psestum ; my nightingales sing, my 
