tramp in the seed. Dogs are
used in this work to keep the sheep together, and they expect to "sheep
in," as they call it, about sixteen acres a day with five hundred animals,
giving these time besides to feed on the levee and on spare land.

Tule land thus prepared has actually yielded from forty to sixty bushels
of wheat per acre. It does not always do so, because, as I myself saw,
it is often badly and irregularly burned over, and probably otherwise
mismanaged. The crop is taken off with headers, as is usual in this State.

For the second year's crop the land is plowed. A two-share gang-plow is
used, with a seat for the plowman. It is drawn by four horses, who have to
be shod with broad wooden shoes, usually made of ash plank, nine by eleven
inches, fastened to the iron shoes of the horse by screws.

The soil does not appear to be sour, and no doubt the ashes from the
burning off do much to sweeten it where it needs that. But several years
are needed to reduce the ground to its best condition for tillage, and the
difference in this respect between newly-burned or second-crop lands and
such matured farms as that of Mr. Bigelow on Sherman Island--who has been
there eight or nine years--is very striking.

It seemed to me that the farmers and land-owners with whom I spoke knew
"for certain" but very little about the best ways to manage these lands,
and that the advice of a thorough scientific agriculturist, like Professor
Johnson of Yale, would be very valuable to them. Now, they know only that
the land when burned over will bear large crops of wheat; and, of course,
in all practical measures for economically putting in and taking off a
wheat crop the Californian needs no instructor.

The soil seemed to me, so far as they dig into it--say six feet deep--to
be, not peat, but a mass of undecayed or but partly decayed roots,
strongly adhering together, so that the upper part of a levee, taken of
course from the lowest part of the ditch, lay in firm sods or tussocks.
These, however, seem to decay pretty rapidly on exposure to the air.
The drainage is not usually deeper than four feet, and in places the
water-level was but three feet below the surface. The newly reclaimed land
being very light, suffers from the dry season, and is often irrigated,
which, as it lies below the river-level, can be quickly and cheaply done.

Sherman Island was one of the earliest to be reclaimed, and there I
visited the fine farm of Mr. Bigelow