Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/459

 439 over the tedious period of waiting for the orange-trees to mature, and are always in profitable demand. To start existence comfortable here the new-comer should have a capital of from five to ten thousand dollars, though peculiar energy may do with less.

It requires about nine years to bring an orange-tree from the seed into full bearing. On the other hand, it is found that by deftly inserting an orange-bud into the bark of a lemon-shoot slitted in an X, and setting this in the ground, a tree can be obtained which bears marketable fruit after the second year. The controversy rages as to whether it is worth while to do this, since the product is dwarf, like the dwarf pear-tree. Though it yield early it will never yield much, and its fruit does not stand shipment as well as that of the seedling. Against this it is maintained that it lives longer than the seedling, and yields choicer varieties of fruit, and that the fruit is more uniform in size and quality, and not subject to a singular form of destruction which sometimes overtakes that of the seedling—being dashed upon its own thorns. In the same way conflicting theories of irrigation prevail. A person who bought grapes in large quantities for the purpose of making them into wine told me that over-irrigation was rendering them watery and insipid. He proposed to meet this by establishing a standard. He would pay twenty dollars a ton for grapes containing twenty-three per cent. of sugar, and for those below standard less. Plentiful irrigation, however, is relied upon to counteract that fatal pest of the vine, the phylloxera. Some advocate the theory of irrigation in the winter or rainy season only. All the water possible is to be conducted upon the land at the time it naturally falls, leaving the soil to act as its own reservoir, and store up a portion for the dry season ahead. Others even deny the need of ir-