Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/181

 BAY AND UPPER COAST COUNTIES 147 lific chick-hatchery turns each morning into its runways over 3000 new balls of canary down. A great number of farms have from 500 to 30,000 feathered earners ; the profit on each hen averages a dollar a year. All told, the grey and white hordes consume as their daily portion over 600 tons of food. In a year, the hens of Petaluma leave in their nests more than 12,000,000 dozen eggs. One shudders to think of the size of the omelette were the Duck Pond to be shaken by brusque seismic disturbance. Besides 3,000,000 infant chickens, 85,000 dozen older ones are annually shipped on the poultry freighters which leave Petaluma from the landing at the head of San Pablo inlet. And yet the de- mand in California alone is not supplied. In ad- dition to the 360,000,000 eggs produced elsewhere in the State, there are many million more imported from outside sources, besides hundreds of carloads of pullets and fowls. As California has less than 3,000,000 popula- tion, her appetite for the products of the hen would seem to be abnormal if one failed to con- sider the number of tourists she entertains at all seasons of the year. In Santa Rosa, a delightful type of the small but affluent California town, there lives a modest man with the firm, sensitive face of the practical dreamer.