Limits of Profitable Citrus Fruit Culture. 219 



The family of citrus fruits is divided into five prominent branches, 

 to wit: the orange, lemon, lime, citron and the shaddock, or pomple mosse 

 or pumalo, and in the profitableness of their cultivation stand in the order 

 named. Therefore, in treating this subject I will consider only the orange, 

 as the representative of the family, the hardiest of the race, the most 

 generally cultivated, and the most profitable. 



Originating, as it is now supposed to have done, in the warmer portions 

 of Asia, the foot-hills and table-lands of the Himalaya Mountains, it was but 

 little known, and only occasionally mentioned in myth and story, until 

 about the tenth century of the christian era, when it was first distinctly 

 noticed by Avicenna, a prominent Arabian physician of that period. From 

 that time it was gradually introduced and acclimatized along the shores of 

 the Mediterranean Sea. The sweet orange passed through Persia and 

 Syria to the Ionian isles, the shores of Italy, Sicily and the south of France, 

 and, according to Loudon, reached the south of England about the sixteenth 

 century,»where it was cultivated only for a short time successfully as a wall 

 fruit. The bitter orange passed through Arabia, Egypt and the north of 

 Africa to Spain and Portugal. Through the Spanish and Portuguese explora- 

 tions and conquests it was carried to the Azores and the Maderia islands, to 

 the West Indies and to Florida, Mexico and South America. In situations 

 favorable to its growth it is now found in a zone spanning the earth 

 extending from 40° south to 46° north latitude, and from the level of the sea 

 to an elevation of 5,000 feet above. 



It is especially cultivated for profit in Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Northern 

 and Southern Africa, Greece, Italy, France, Spain. Portugal, the Azores, 

 West Indies, Brazil, Mexico, a portion of the gulf coast of the United States, 

 Florida, Southern California, and to some extent in Central and Northern 

 California, the Sandwich Islands, Japan, Atistralia, a portion of China and 

 India. If we were to judge, therefore, from the great area of territory and 

 remarkably diverse conditions in which the citrus fruits are found, we might 

 readily conclude that they could be profitably grown at any point adapted 

 to them within the latitudes named above. This is not the case, however, for 

 experience has taught, and is annually teaching us, that climate, soils, va- 

 rieties and markets influence and control the profitableness of citrus fruit 

 culture to a greater or less extent than mere geographical limits. We will 

 therefore consider these in the order named. 



' CLIMATE. 



That of the Azores has been considered by many of the authorities as 

 the best for citrus fruit culture. Possessing a moderately humid atmos- 

 phere, with a mean temperature of 58° in Avinter, 61° in spring, 68° in sum- 

 mer and 62° in autumn, and a minimum temperature of only 40° and 

 a maximum of 90°, and free alike from the desiccating winds of Africa, 

 and the cold northers that prevail throughout Southern Europe, the citrus 

 fruits are produced there readily, without irrigation, in great quantities and 

 of the best quality. 



