Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/216

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206
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

area, are more profitable, and give employment to more laborers, in proportion to acreage, than any others of the class. The greater part of the apple crop is consumed at home, but all the other fruits must find their chief market outside the State.

In addition to the acreage already tabulated, there are 1,080 acres of nectarines, 300 acres of quinces, and about 100 acres of Japan persimmons. This makes a grand total of 191,894 acres devoted to this class of fruits. Statistics are somewhat incomplete for some of the mountain counties, but it will not be safe to add more than five per cent, and we can then say in round numbers that 200,000 acres are planted with the deciduous fruits.

The leading apple counties of the State are Sonoma, Los Angeles, Siskiyou, Santa Cruz, San Diego, and Humboldt. Nothing could better illustrate the extent to which the climate of California is modified by local conditions. San Diego is the most southern county, Siskiyou is the most northern, and they are separated from each other by more than seven hundred miles, but both contain great apple-growing districts. The leading apricot counties are Solano, Alameda, and Los Angeles. The cherry is chiefly grown in Alameda and Santa Clara. The peach industry has been most completely developed in Santa Clara, Solano, Los Angeles, Tulare, Butte, and Tehama. Nectarines are mostly planted in Sonoma and Alameda. Plums and prunes seem to belong chiefly to Santa Clara, Tulare, Alameda, and Solano. Lastly, the great pear districts are in Sacramento, Solano, Alameda, and Los Angeles. The Coast Range lowlands and foothills, together with a few districts in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, produce the bulk of all the deciduous fruits.

Third among the horticultural divisions that I have thought it desirable to tabulate are the nut-bearing trees, comparatively small in present acreage, but likely to become more and more important industries. The nuts grown on a commercial scale are only two, the almond and the walnut. The chestnut, pistachio, filbert, pecan, and a few others have been planted to some extent. The following table shows the counties that have 1,000 acres and upward of either almonds or walnuts:

Table III.Acreage of Nut-hearing Trees.

County. Almonds. Walnuts.
Alameda 1,237 36
Butte 1,588 12
Los Angeles 107 1,789
Orange 102 2,592
Santa Barbara 340 1,203
Solano 1,470 70
Ventura 150 6,310
(7 counties) 4,984 11,022