This section is from "The Horticulturist, And Journal Of Rural Art And Rural Taste", by P. Barry, A. J. Downing, J. Jay Smith, Peter B. Mead, F. W. Woodward, Henry T. Williams. Also available from Amazon: Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste.
California exhibits, at the present moment, the most marked difference between the Anglo-Saxon and the Spanish race and habits. A fair on a grand scale has been held at Sacramento, and the California Farmer discourses of fruit in a style which must silence some boastful exhibitors among us. On one sprig of a pear-tree was a cluster of twelve large pears; on another, a stem five feet long, were no less than thirty magnificent peaches, some of which measured seven inches in circumference. Double musk and water-melons, monster pumpkins, 185 pounds in weight; a Newtown pippin, 15½ inches by 14½ inches; lemon oranges 19 inches; seedling peaches a foot in circumference; Hovey's strawberries, four inches in circumference; stalks of corn twenty feet in length, and so on, were some of their trophies. It speaks, too, of parks six miles square, presenting the appearance of a magnificent English domain, the handiwork principally of nature. What a variety of climate our people have to enjoy; cultivation embraces every soil and latitude.
When shall we receive specimens of California productions over a good railroad?
 
Continue to: