Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/351

Rh exhibition at Ferry, Russell & Woodward's, corner of Front and Alder streets, is only twenty-two inches long, and weighs over five pounds. There are too many cherries on it to count, but a thousand would be a safe guess, we think, and they are all huge 'Royal Annes.' If that branch astonishes the San Franciscans, they ought to see the one we speak of."—Portland Bulletin.

"I have seen large fields of wheat average fifty-six bushels to the acre, and weigh sixty-two pounds to the bushel; and have seen fields which yielded forty to fifty bushels per acre, from a 'volunteer' crop; that is, produced the second year from grain shattered out during harvest, sprouting during the fall, and growing without even harrowing. We generally raise the variety known as 'Club,' and sow it in the fall or spring. Wo produce about forty bushels of corn to the acre, of the large Yellow Dent variety, and it ripens nicely by the first of September. The potato is perfectly at home hero, growing large, fine, and mealy. I let a neighbor have nine pounds of the early Goodrich variety, last spring, from which he raised 1,575 pounds. Sweet potatoes yield finely, but they are not so sweet as farther south. Turnips, beets, cabbages, tomatoes, peas, beans, onions, are all raised with ease and in great abundance. Although the country has been settled but a few years, there are already a number of fine-bearing orchards. I commenced here six years ago last spring, on ground that had never been fenced or plowed. After thoroughly plowing up about five acres of ground, I planted it in orchard with small yearling trees. This year I had one thousand bushels of the finest peaches that I ever saw grown—fully equal to the best Delaware and New Jersey peaches—besides large quantities of apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, grapes, and every variety of small fruits. Fruits of all kinds are perfect in every respect in this climate, particularly plums, the curculio having never been seen, I have one hundred bearing plum-trees. One Imperial Gage, two years ago, produced four hundred pounds of delicious, rich fruit, which brought eight cents per pound in gold; last year it had about the same amount of fruit, which sold for twelve and a half cents per pound, gold; many other trees did nearly as well. There are a large number of orchards just coming into bearing in this country, which will, of course, bring down the price of fruit."—Philip Ritz, of Walla Walla.

"The Department of Agriculture, in the report of 1870, puts the average wheat yield of Oregon at twenty bushels per acre,