The age-herald., 1900-07-21
LEMONS AND LINES : IN ACTIVE DEMAND
Birmingham Consumes Large Quantities of Each Annually,
MESSINAS NOT PLENTIFUL
The Lime is Rapidly Supplanting the Lemon in Beverages-The Demand for Both is Good While the
 Supply is Short

The demand for lemons is greater this summer than usual while the supply is less.l Prices have risen steadily, and the the best Messinas bring 8 a box in large job lots in New York. Wholesale prices in Birmingham are $550 to $6.
 The visible supply in New York and in transit from Messina on the 14th of July was 211, ,0O0 boxes as compared with 267,000 boxes at the same period last year.
 Formerly the Messina lemon had the field to itself, but the California product is now in great favor, and lemon culture on the Pacific slope has come to be extensive and profitable. Lemons, in fact, are rated among California's best commercial crop.
 Birmingham consumes about 10000 boxes of lemons annually. That many boxes at least are handled by the Morris avenue trade. In the months of June, July and August the demand here will reach some thing like 450O boxes
 A box is supposed to contain 96O lemons. Some short, but the average will not fall below $50. Thus figuring on 10000 boxes, this section uses 3,5OO,0 lemons per an- mum.
 Colonel E. l.. Higdon large fruit broker, told a reporter yesterday that he was ne- gotiating by wire with a San Francisco house for d carload of California lemons. He said if he had them now he could dis pose of them readily at top prices.
 "Yes," remarked Colonel Higdon, this is good summer for. the lemon trade But lines are beginning to suppant lemons. The lime trade is extending very fast. The sales of lines in this country have actually in creased 300 per cent. this summer com pared with last. It is only within the past few years that lines have been cultivated. Until recent years they only grew wild. But now the lime forms great commercial crop.
 Florida will never be able to compete with California in lemons, but she pro- duces excellent lines. and the culture of this fruit pays we'll Many of us re- member when the trade in lines was con fined chiefly to the soda fount people. Now Hines used extensively in barrooms and in families.
 For health purposes the lime is known to be far superior to the lemon, and it is much cheaper. At the rate the demand has
 
 multiply rapidly in order to keep up with it.
 It would seem from Colonel Hgdon's talk that the lemon had seen it's best days. Sta tistics are not required to show that lines, as a commercial product, have establised themselves and are very generally used. One sees them everywhere. In barrooms lemonade is seldom called for now, and where one whisky sour, in which lemon juice is an ingredient, is wanted ten rickies -whiskey, lime juice and carbonated water are sold.
 No one imagines that the lemon will ever be driven entirely out of the trade, for lemon pies will always hold their own, and the lime will never take the place of it's larger sister in the preparation of fiavoring extracts for custards and the like. But in the course of few years the lemon crop will have fallen off very materially.
 Lines are shipped in barrels, but they are usually supplied to the retail trade by the hundred Birmingham quotations range from 75c to $1 per hundred.