exterminated. At the American occupation, elk were seen in droves of thousands. Great numbers were killed from the deck of steamers plying to Sacramento. Occupation of the State by Indians immemorially, and by Spaniards for nearly a century, had not appreciably diminished the wild animals; but the same wanton spirit which in a score of years exterminated tens of millions of the American bison on the great plains has in California made the great mammals nearly extinct. The grizzly bear (the State emblem) once in great abundance in all parts of the State is now scarce; the black, cinnamon and brown bear are more common, though rare. Sea lions of a ton weight are still found along the coast, and their populous rookeries a few hundred feet from the "Cliff House" in San Francisco are an object of interest to travelers. The California lion, mountain lion or puma, is still not infrequent, and wildcats abound in the mountains. The coyote is common and of utility in decimating the hordes of rabbits, though an ill-judged bounty on coyote scalps has of late years much reduced the numbers of this small wolf. The beaver, once in vast numbers here, is now confined to the remotest streams; and the valuable sea otter is almost extinct. Black-tailed and mule deer are still reasonably frequent; but the antelopes, which once roamed the northern and southern valleys in great bands, have hardly a representative left. The same is true of the mountain sheep (Ovis Ammon), once common in all the higher ranges. Spermophiles, or ground squirrels, and five species of gopher, are innumerable and a great pest to the farmer as well as carriers of bubonic and other diseases. The Federal and State governments are making scientific campaigns to exterminate them. Millions have been poisoned. The true gray squirrel is common in the north. Jack rabbits and cotton-tails" are abundant in all parts of the State, despite community "drives" in which sometimes tens of thousands are killed in a day. The birds of California number above 350 species. The largest winged creature in North America is the California condor. Quail of two species are in vast abundance throughout the State.

Earthquakes. While the Pacific Coast of North, Central and South America in general is peculiarly liable in recent geological times to seismic disturbances, California has never experienced an earthquake of the second magnitude, nor probably even of the fourth. The only first-degree earthquake in the United States was that of New Madrid, Mo., in 1811. The largest city in the world, if built upon its epicentre would have been irremediably wiped off the map. California has never had an earthquake approaching in severity that of Charleston, S. C., in 1886. The most serious "tremblores" of California were in 1812 when the fall of the Mission tower of San Juan Capistrano killed 30 persons in the church, but did no special damage elsewhere in the village; and 1872 when some old adobe houses in Owens Valley collapsed and killed 19 Mexicans. The "Earthquake" of San Francisco, April 1906, was a very minor shock (geologically) — not above the 6th or 7th magnitude. It broke rusty watermains in the 30 feet of sand with which lower San Francisco is "filled". It threw down a few

decrepit frame buildings, on the same sand "fill," but not a single respectable structure in the city. Fire caught in one of the wrecked tenements; and half San Francisco was consumed because there was no water to check the fire. In Charleston, practically every building was wrecked by the earthquake.

The unremitting tension upon the crust of the entire earth has found its "safety-valves» in California. The earthquake "faults" are not only known and visible, but mapped. There is no excuse for building towns or reservoirs across one of these "faults." For this reason, the foremost geologists agree (vid. Branner) that California is safer from earthquakes than are many States where these safety-valves have not yet been developed, and earthquakes are as yet strangers.

River Systems.-As in most arid States, the drainage of California is simple. For some 300 miles on its southeastern edge the State is bounded by the Colorado River, which rises in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and flows 1,360 miles to the Gulf of California. It has no tributaries whatever from California, all eastbound streams from the Sierra Nevada being lost in the desert. On the western coast, though a few rivers reach the sea (like the Klamath Mad, Eel and Salinas) they are relatively un important and incidental. The real drainage system of the State has outlet through San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate, by two chief inland rivers which join about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. Both rise in the Sierra Nevada, the Sacramento (370 miles long) to the north, the San Joaquin (350 miles long) to the south. Their main course averages along nearly the median line, north and south, through nearly two-thirds the length of the State. They have no tributaries worthy of the name from the great westerly mountain wall, the Coast Range; their waters being fed almost exclusively from the vast Alpine chain which is in effect, though not politically, the eastern boundary of California down to latitude 35° 30". Their important feeders from the Sierra are the Feather, Yuba, Cosumnes, American, Mokelumne, Kern, Kings, etc. All these are fine mountain torrents, beloved of sportsmen, and flowing through magnificent scenery, but not of rank as waterways. The most important is the Feather, which has a large drainage area. Several streams in southern California, like the Los Angeles, San Gabriel and Santa Ana, reach the sea, but all are practically exhausted by irrigation uses, except during winter flood-water. The many streams from the abrupt eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada all disappear in alkaline "sinks," - like Pyramid Lake, the Mojave River, Mono Lake and Death Valley,- and never even in flood reach the ocean by their great natural conduit, the Colorado River.

The total mean annual run-off (in acre-feet) of 32 chief California rivers is 59,078,200. The Colorado River is enormously largest, with 16,900,000 acre-feet; the Sacramento next with 9,770,000; the Feather 5,880,000; American 3,820,000; Yuba 3,050,000. The San Joaquin, Kings, McCloud, Merced, Stanislaus and Link rivers all exceed 1,000,000 acre-feet; and the Tuolumne 2,000,000. Seven others exceed 500,000.

The Sacramento and Colorado are navigable to light-draft steamers to the State capital and

to Needles, respectively. The lakes of California are not important as to navigation. Tulare Lake, receiving the drainage of the Kern, Kaweah and Kings rivers, is 700 square miles in area, but only 40 feet deep. In very high water its overflow reaches the San Joaquin; but ordinarily its income of waters is cared for by evaporation. Lake Tahoe in the extreme north, at an elevation of 6,200 feet, is 20 miles long and 1,500 feet deep, and famous for the purity of its waters, the beauty of its scenery and its trout. It is the largest of the glacial lakes, of which there are a great number in the Sierra, mostly at altitudes exceeding the highest mountain summits east of Colorado. The lower-lying lakes of the State are mostly without outlet, and of various degrees of brackishness, culminating in the "sink" of the Amargosa River nearly 200 feet below sea-level on the eastern side of the range, where evaporation has left vast alkaline deposits, now of great commercial value.

Geology. The main axis of the Sierra Nevada is of granite throughout. To the north there are some metamorphic peaks, and many summits are capped with volcanic materials. Mount Shasta in the far north is an extinct volcano (14,470 feet). So also is Lassen's Peak (10,577 feet), of late years sometimes emitting smoke. This granite core is flanked by a very heavy mass of slaty, metamorphic rocks,mostly argillaceous, chloritic and talcose slates, -constituting the great auriferous belt of the Sierra. The Coast Range is made up almost entirely of cretaceous and tertiary marines, chiefly sandstones and bituminous shales. It is in this belt that the recent vast development of petroleum has been made.

Besides the vast reaches of alluvial soils in the lower valleys, which were first selected for agriculture, an enormous area of disintegrated granite gravels along the foothills and first acclivities has been found the most productive soil in the State, particularly with reference to valuable crops. These great gravel beds, which seem to the farmer from the black "bottoms" of Ohio the most unpromising of soils, are in reality rich in all the elements of plant food. The vast majority of the valuable orchards, particularly of southern California, are planted upon this granitic detritus; and without exception the finest oranges and other citrus fruits come from this soil. The relative aridity of California, long supposed to be a curse, is now known to be a two-fold blessing. Exhaustive analyses, comparative with every portion of the Union, show these gravels to average much richer in chemical constituents than soils leached out by excessive rainfall. Furthermore, the fact that precipitation is not invariably sufficient to ensure crops has compelled irrigation, which does ensure them; so that farmers in the arid lands have much greater crop-certainty than those of regions with most abundant rainfall.

Agriculture. In no item of its history has California been more unlike other States than in development and sequences of agriculture. The first (and for 60 years commercially chief) industry was cattle derived from herds introduced from Mexico by Viceroy Galvez, 1769, and chief wealth of the Mission establishments and Spanish colonists. It was a generation after the American occupation before agricul

ture was seriously undertaken; and for another term of years it was chiefly a gigantic seasonal "gamble with the weather" in dry-farming of cereals. The characteristic features of agriculture up to about 1870 were enormous holdings, reckoned by at least tens of thousands of acres, with the single crop (almost exclusively wheat and barley) and purchase of every other article of necessity or luxury. On areas of hundreds of square miles apiece there were an individual or corporate owner, a single crop, a few hundred hirelings at the height of the season and their temporary quarters. A few of these enormous ranchos still survive; and Miller and Lux still farm about 1,000,000 acres, with 20,000 acres in a single field. But within a generation the typical character of agriculture in California has radically changed. The greatest record drought (1864) which not only destroyed grain but hundreds of thousands of cattle (60,000 head being sold that year in Santa Barbara at 371⁄2c. per head), exclusion of the Chinese, who had been the chief reliance for labor on the great ranchos, the fall in wheat, and other factors, led to the breaking up of these gigantic domains. A slight idea of the change may be had from the census fact that in 1850 the average size of all California farms was 4,456.6 acres; and in 1910, 318 acres. Along with this great dry-farm gambling-for such it was sheep became a leading industry in the State, particularly in southern California. But the enormous increase in value of land has reduced sheep to a valuation of $17,000,000. The city of Pasadena (Pop. 40,000) was a sheep pasture in 1870.

Within about 30 years that is, since 1885, the general character of California farming has changed to small holdings, occupied not by tenants but by American owners, with families, with diversified crops, and obliged to purchase only the luxuries of life; with intensive methods and certainty (by irrigation) of crops. California has now more than onefourth of all the irrigators in the United States. The average size of irrigated farms is in southern California 214 acres; in rest of State about 82 acres. The typical California farm under the modern régime is perhaps 10 acres; irrigated either by its own pumping plant or from a community ditch, and yielding an annual income of not less than $200 per acre and sometimes $900.

Perhaps the greatest single factor in bringing about this structural change was the orange. In 1862 there were 25,000 orange trees in the State, all seedlings, and deriving from Mexico, where the fruit was introduced by the Spaniards nearly three and a half centuries earlier. In 1873 two seedless orange trees from Brazil were sent from the Department of Agriculture in Washington to Riverside, Cal. From these two parent trees has sprung the modern orange industry of California- and practically of the United States; as Florida, the only other orange State in the Union, yields only one box of oranges to California's two. Millions of trees grafted from their "buds" are now bearing in this State, and the hereditary fruit, seedless and delicious, leads the American market. This crop, highly remunerative, and practically continuous (shipments being made every month in the year) has been for these

reasons, and æsthetic ones, a large attraction to high-class immigration, and an important factor in shaping agricultural methods. For development of the industry, see statistics below.

In deciduous fruits, total production, shipments fresh, canned and dried, California has within a generation come to lead the Union; as it leads in all tropical fruits.

Beet Sugar.-California was the first successful grower of sugar beets, and has by far the largest factories. In 1909 it was second to Colorado in the value of its beet-sugar output ($11,981,000), or 25 per cent of the total. The beet sugar industry of the United States originated at Alvarado, Alvarado County, Cal. In 1916 the output of its 11 beet-sugar factories was 472,770,100 pounds of sugar; value, $30,800,000. In 1917 the number of beet-sugar factories and acreage planted to beets had increased in one year over 26 per cent. California beets average 7 per cent higher in sugar than those of other States. The effect of the great war and government control on agriculture in California (as elsewhere) is not yet to be prophesied; particularly as to beet sugar, wheat, beans and live-stock. In 1917 the production of sugar beets was 2,636,800,000 pounds. Within a decade California has become the greatest producer of beans (navy and frijol, but principally lima). In 1916 the yield of beans was 5,047,082 bushels, valued at $19,144,000. In 1917 there were 8,035,000 bushels at double the value per bushel. This industry is practically confined to Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. Within less than a decade, also, cotton has come to count in the agricultural resources of California. Imperial County, organized 1907 (a recently reclaimed desert, often compared with the valley of the Nile), now produces annually 65,000 bales of cotton (40 per cent Durango or longstaple) worth $9,380,000, besides a great variety of other vegetable products. It lies along the Colorado River, just north of the Mexican line. Ten years ago a desert, it has now a population of 50,000, with several small cities and tens of thousands of acres under cultivation by a huge irrigating system from the river.

With modern refrigerator freight cars, a vast quantity not only of citrus and deciduous fruits, but even of fresh vegetables, is now shipped from California, 2,000 to 3,000 miles to the Eastern States, including some 800 carloads of celery annually from one small town. Strawberries are in the Los Angeles market every month of the year, but are shipped (as are blackberries, raspberries, loganberries, etc.) to Arizona and New Mexico only in summer; as are also the famous canteloupes and watermelons. California is foremost producer of the most extraordinary of forage plants, the Arabian-Spanish-Mexican alfalfa. This produces, under irrigation, about one ton per acre for each of four to eight cuttings per annum. 1917 it sold at $26 per ton. In 1910 there were 487,134 acres planted to alfalfa; in 1916, 862,534 acres.

In

Up to 1808 the hop industry of the United States was all in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts. Soon New York, with better soil, had a monopoly; then Wisconsin and Michigan became important hop-growers. In 1916 five counties of California produced more hops than all the rest of the United States. In 1916 the live-stock in the State consisted of 468,000 horses, valued at $45,396,000; 70,000 mules, valued at $8,120,000; 591,000 milch cows, valued at $39,597,000; 1,636,000 other cattle, valued at $62,332,000; 2,524,000 sheep, valued at $16,911,000; 994,000 hogs, valued at $10,039,000; and poultry valued at $19,000,000, making a total value of $201,395,000.

In the same year the total value of the State's dairy products amounted to $40,310,105, consisting of 70,030,174 pounds of butter, worth $19,181,264; 7,745,124 pounds of cheese, worth $1,203,592; and other produce valued at $19,925,249.

The sensational achievements of Luther Burbank in hybridizing fruits—for instance, the creation of a large plum without any pit whatever are already world-famous. Almost as remarkable results have been reached in floriculture. Seeds and bulbs are raised on a great scale; carnations, calla lilies and other flowers being grown outdoors by the 10-acre field. A large proportion of the flower seed of the United States is grown in California, and it supplies most of the mustard of the nation. The total area of California farms is now over 46,000 square miles, considerably exceeding the entire area of States of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maryland. The State was eleventh in the Union in per capita value of farm products ($88) and fifth in value of products of farm ($1,816 as compared with Ohio, $929) in 1900. California had in 1910, 87,670 farms; total value of farm property, $1,448,560,000; total value of farm products 1899, $131,690,606. Total acreage in farms, 27,883,000 acres, of which 11,380,000 acres The are improved. farmed decreased 3 per cent, 1900 to 1910. In 1850 there were 872 farms; in 1860, 18,716; in 1870, 23,724. The development of farming is briefly indicated as follows to 1910-the latest Federal figures available. The great increase since 1910 cannot be officially stated.

area

GRAIN

Corn Wheat.

Barley.

Oats.

Rye. Rice.