Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1881-04-14
Florida Qranges...An-. Industry Worth
Millions to the Little. State.

Florida Qranges...An=@l Industry Worth
Millions to the Little State.
The orange culture ia Florida amount
ed to little or nothing before the war.
Northern industry, and methods have
found their way into the State since, and
gave this cultivation q remarkable I'M
petus. Ten years ago even the product
amounted to but little. Now it brings
millions to the State, and its increase
for the next ten years can hardly be es-
timated. Gen. Cameron was taken yes
terday by ex-senator Yulee, a friend
and former associate, who represented
Florida in the Senate thirty-fve years
ago, to see the largest orange grove in
the world. This was the first time they
had met since Mr.. Yulee left the Senate
for the South in 1861, and the renewal
of the friendship between the two has
been one of the pleasing incidents of the
stay in Florida. Colonel Duffy and my
self were invited to accompany the par
ty, and did SO. Long before we reached
the great grove toward which we were
tending, there were patches of orange
trees to be seen on every side, many of
to the branches. Beautiful flowers
OlOOucu LII tu6 OldCh 1AuCht du0 O0AAy
vegetables were just springing up. A
midst of $4,000 orange trees, covering
over 400 acres of ground. A perfect
wilderness of orange trees, apparently
not cultivated with care, certainly not
planted regularly, but just as nature
had sown the wild seed. The wild
luxuriance of nature had, however, been
curbed by man, who, in pursuit of
wealth, had turned vinegar into honey,
and, by grating on the sour trees the
finer sweet varieties, had snatched from
the wilderness an income of over SAC, 900
a year. General Cameron rambled with
US over the place, all of us plucking the
golden fruit ad lib., and imagining our
selves in the yeritable Garden of Eden
earth, air and sky, soft, balmy and
ethereal, combining to fix the illusion,
and were only brought back to a realiza-
ton that we were fifty miles from our
hotel by an exclamation from one of the
party: "By Jove, we're lost!" This
fact soon became apparent to us all, and
just think of it-you who are bound by
bands of thick-ribbed ice-lost in an
orange grove in Florida! General Cam
eron enjoyed the joke, and busted him.
self eating the fruit plucked with his
own hands. Many of the trees were
laden with fruit of immense size and
beautiful color, although much of the
crop had been gathered. One of the
tempting sights in the grove was the
grape fruit, of great size and beautiful
lemon color. It is said to be the forbid
den fruit of the Garden of Eden. 1t is
useless, except to look at and for pre-
serving, although it is eaten by some.
1t has sour, insipid taste. Lemons of
immense size, growing upon small trees.
now and then dotted the orange or
chard. After an hour spent in looking
over the grove we, one by one, found
our way back to the packing-house,
where the superintendent told us that
$4,000 boxes of oranges had been
shipped this season from one-haf of the
grove over which we had been ram
bling; that means 100000 oranges,
for which the owner had been offered
$35, 900 while the fruit was on the trees.
"How many years does it take for an
orange grove to come into bearingP"I
asked the superintendent. ''Eight
years from the seed, and about five
years if grated or budded on to the
wild fruit. That is, 1 mean to say, they
will bear in eight years from the seed,
and in five years from the graft. 1hey
constantly grow better and bear more
oranges every year. No man can tell
how long the tree will be useful-cer-
tainlv more than 100 years. H#s
People in Florida are naturally as en-
thusiastic over orange culture as miners
are who find rich placers, and they tell
almost as marvellous stories. You hear
them talk about trees upon which grow
from 5000 to 1000 oranges, but there
is great deal of fancy in this statement,
and the truth is marvellous enough.
Mr.. Fairbanks, the historian of Flori-
da, and an eminent authority upon the
orange, says that an average tree will
bear, season in and out, 700 oranges,
and that, where they are grown from
the seed or transplanted regularly, about
sixty trees to the acre would be fair
average. These sixty trees in fair
season would yield $4,000 oranges,
worth at the grove, $40. This is a
cold, reliable estimate of what an ordi-
nary orange grove will do; many will do
more, and still more will do less, but
$40 worth of fruit upon an acre of
ground will strike the Northern farmer
as being decidedly proftable.-Cor. Bos-