ner of the United States will produce in abundance, and year
after year without failure, all the fruits and nuts which for a thousand
years the civilized world of Europe has looked to the Mediterranean to
supply. We shall not need any more to send over the Atlantic for
raisins, English walnuts, almonds, figs, olives, prunes, oranges,
lemons, limes, and a variety of other things which we know commercially
as Mediterranean products. We have all this luxury and wealth at our
doors, within our limits. The orange and the lemon we shall still bring
from many places; the date and the pineapple and the banana will never
grow here except as illustrations of the climate, but it is difficult to
name any fruit of the temperate and semi-tropic zones that Southern
California cannot be relied on to produce, from the guava to the peach.

It will need further experiment to determine what are the more
profitable products of this soil, and it will take longer experience to
cultivate them and send them to market in perfection. The pomegranate
and the apple thrive side by side, but the apple is not good here unless
it is grown at an elevation where frost is certain and occasional snow
may be expected. There is no longer any doubt about the peach, the
nectarine, the pear, the grape, the orange, the lemon, the apricot, and
so on; but I believe that the greatest profit will be in the products
that cannot be grown elsewhere in the United States--the products to
which we have long given the name of Mediterranean--the olive, the fig,
the raisin, the hard and soft shell almond, and the walnut. The orange
will of course be a staple, and constantly improve its reputation as
better varieties are raised, and the right amount of irrigation to
produce the finest and sweetest is ascertained.

It is still a wonder that a land in which there was no indigenous
product of value, or to which cultivation could give value, should be so
hospitable to every sort of tree, shrub, root, grain, and flower that
can be brought here from any zone and temperature, and that many of
these foreigners to the soil grow here with a vigor and productiveness
surpassing those in their native land. This bewildering adaptability has
misled many into unprofitable experiments, and the very rapidity of
growth has been a disadvantage. The land has been advertised by its
monstrous vegetable productions, which are not fit to eat, and but
testify to the fertility of the soil; and the repu