Marin County, lying north of San Francisco, is the country of butter ranches on the coast, though there are also many profitable dairies south of the bay, in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.  In fact, dry as California is commonly and erroneously supposed to be, it exports a considerable quantity of butter, and a dairy-man said to me but recently that, to make the business really prosperous, the State needed a million or two more inhabitants, which means that the surplus product is now so great that it keeps down the price.  No small quantity of this surplus goes East, as far as New York; and it is one of the curiosities of production and commerce that, while California can send butter to the Atlantic, it buys eggs of Illinois.  One would have thought the reverse more probable.

Marin County offers some important advantages to the dairy-farmer.  The sea-fogs which it receives cause abundant springs of excellent soft water, and also keep the grass green through the summer and fall in the gulches and ravines.  Vicinity to the ocean also gives this region a very equal climate.  It is never cold in winter nor hot in summer.  In the milk-houses I saw usually a stove, but it was used mainly to dry the milk-room after very heavy fogs or continued rains; and in the height of summer the mercury marks at most sixty-seven degrees, and the milk keeps sweet without artificial aids for thirty-six hours.

The cows require no sheds nor any store of food, though the best dairymen, I noticed, raised beets; but more, they told me, to feed to their pigs than for the cows.  These creatures provide for themselves the year round in the open fields; but care is taken, by opening springs and leading water in iron pipes, to provide an abundance of this for them.

The county is full of dairy-farms; and, as this business requires rather more and better buildings than wheat, cattle, or sheep farming, as well as more fences, this gives the country a neater and thriftier appearance than is usual among farming communities in California.  The butter-maker must have good buildings, and he must keep them in the best order.

But, besides these smaller dairy-farms, Marin County contains some large “butter ranches,” as they are called, which are a great curiosity in their way.  The Californians, who have a singular genius for doing things on a large scale which in other States are done by retail, have managed to conduct even dairying in this way, and have known how to “organize” the making of butter in a way which would surprise an Orange County farmer.  Here, for instance—­and to take the most successful and complete of these experiments—­is the rancho of Mr. Charles Webb Howard, on which I had the curiosity to spend a couple of days.  It contains eighteen thousand acres of land well fitted for dairy purposes.  On this he has at this time nine separate farms, occupied by nine tenants engaged in making butter.  To let the farms outright would not do, because the tenants would put up poor improvements, and would need, even then, more capital than tenant-farmers usually have.  Mr. Howard, therefore, contrived a scheme which seems to work satisfactorily to all concerned, and which appears to me extremely ingenious.