32 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
Ifn Common Council. 
Editor National Nurseryman : 
I herein enclose subscription for another year. California, 
to the great majority of the people of the East, is an interest¬ 
ing and fascinating country; but more especially is it so to all 
persons interested in agricultural and horticultural pursuits. 
They see such possibilities ; they see the wonders that can be 
accomplished in a few years. 
I have been here but seven years, and yet I have trees of 
my own planting that when planted in May, 1892, were 
scarcely bigger than a knitting needle and not over six inches 
high. Now they stand erect and rear their heads in the air 
more than sixty feet ; these are the Eucalyptus, a wonderful 
grower, imported from Australia to this country. As a timber, 
it is of but little use ; as a wood, it makes a clean sweet fire 
and giving a little more heat than cottonwood ; but being so 
rapid a grower, and the fact that it can be cut every five years? 
makes it a valuable wood for this section. 
So much has been said of the glorious California climate? 
that it has come almost to be ridiculed. No matter how good 
a thing may be, it is possible to talk it and sing its praises 
until people tire of it; and yet, California climate is no myth. 
I think it is all that has ever been claimed for it. During the 
years I have been here, it is safe to say that the time lost by 
our men in consequence of bad weather will not exceed one 
week to the year. Each day is filled with work to do. We 
are now plowing, grading, fluming and getting ready for turn¬ 
ing the water over the land and planting. There seems to be 
no stopping place. 
We at times find ourselves lost, and have to stop and think 
before we can fix the season in our minds. Winter is sup¬ 
posed to be the rainy season here. This is true in one sense ; 
it is the season when we expect and when we should have rain, 
but it is far from being rainy as understood by many who have 
never been here. The average rainfall for the past eighteen 
years here in Southern California has been ten inches and a 
half; the heaviest fall was in ’84, twenty-two inches and three- 
fourths ; the lightest fall was in ’83, a fraction under three 
inches. If we could feel sure of getting eight to twelve inches 
each year, we should feel pretty well and consider ourselves 
as being numbered with the chosen few. You will thus per¬ 
ceive from this, that it cannot rain very hard continually for 
three months in the year. The rainfall is never so abundant, 
at best, to lay an embargo on outdoor labor for more than a 
few days during the whole winter. Irrigation is necessary for 
the growing of all fruits and vegetables, and water is king. 
In buying property here, the important item to be con¬ 
sidered is water. I am speaking of Southern California. In 
the northern part of this state, they have a greater rainfall and 
the great bulk of their fruit and other products is grown with¬ 
out irrigation. Dry land here, not under irrigation, com¬ 
mands but a small price. Thousands of acres lie around in 
every direction ; the rent of such land is a dollar an acre ; on 
such land, our grain and hay are grown ; barley and wheat 
hay which constitutes the bulk of hay fed to horses. If the 
rain is short, then the hay crop is light and price rules high ; 
it is now worth from $20 to $25. If we should get liberal 
rains during the next sixty days (say three inches) there will 
be a large and abundant hay crop cut in May and the price 
will drop to six or seven dollars a ton. 
Thus you see that dry farming is a hard business ; if the 
crop is abundant, the price is low ; if high, the farmer has but 
little to sell. With irrigation, the husbandman can count 
with almost mathematical certainty on the coming of his crop. 
I often think, in the years to come, that irrigation in the East 
will cut quite a little figure. Of course, it will not pay there 
to go to large expense ; but there are thousands of acres of 
land in every state where irrigation can be practiced inex¬ 
pensively, and during a decade, would give back many dollars 
for each one expended. 
Riverside is the great orange centre of the world. Nowhere 
else can such extensive plantings of the orange tree be found. 
Here, one can drive hundreds of miles in continuons orange 
groves on either side. About one-third of the oranges from 
California are shipped from here. The crop this year is below 
the average. The output of this place will likely run between 
3,500 and 4,000 cars. Lemons now bid fair to prove a paying 
investment. A new industry started some four or five years 
ago and located thirty miles to the south of this place is the 
growing of celery. The product this year will be in the neigh¬ 
borhood of 700 cars ; it is shipped largely to Chicago and 
cities this side. New industries are continually springing up. 
California, some day, will be an empire in itself. By this 
statement, I do not mean that California is all there is of this 
great country, nor the greater part of it; it is but a small part 
of the great whole ; but it is a marvellous little spot of the 
great world between the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific ocean 
that some day will give a good account of itself and have a 
history of its own. 
Riverside, Cal., Feb. 4, 1899. E. A. Chase. 
THE NURSERY SITUATION. 
Editor National Nurseryman : 
After five years of hard struggling, through a financial crisis, 
with short demands and low prices for all lines of nursery 
stock, we are now brought to face the great loss of peach, pear, 
quince and other more tender stock by the present severe 
winter. Though we have lost quite heavily, yet there may be 
some good results from this loss that we have so far over¬ 
looked. We have had a lasting lesson taught us in our exper¬ 
ience of the past winter, one that should not be forgotten in a 
life time, and that is dig the peach trees and lay them down and 
cover them root and branch in the fall, any time before the 
ground freezes, covering the top of the ground with a good 
layer, six inches, of stable manure. This I consider better 
than cellaring and any nurseryman can do this at small ex¬ 
pense and in this case the trees will be safe. We hope severe 
cold weather has destroyed many of the insect pests. There 
is no question that nurserymen will have more or less trouble 
with customers in deliveries this spring owing to the fact that 
many inexperienced growers will be discouraged from the loss 
of trees the past winter. 
A question to come before the next meeting of the Ameri¬ 
can Association of Nurserymen is to create some measure 
to prevent nurserymen from sending wholesale price lists to 
retail buyers, also to prevent sending surplus and wholesale 
lists in the open mail. 
Marceline, Mo., March 20, 1899. 
S. H. Linton. 
