646 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



from cuttings and arc the only tree that produces fruit without 

 a bloom. They have no flower of any kind. 



The watermelon reaches the pink of perfection there and the 

 "darkies" get as fat and sleek as polished ebony while they last. In 

 (lie extreme South, alligator and avocado pears, mangoes, custard 

 and maumee apples, sapodillas and sour saps are experimented with, 

 mostly as curiosities, as they are properly tropical fruits. 



The cattle live on the commons the year round. If you go to buy 

 a cow for family use, the first thing you ask is, Will she eat? An 

 animal that has come to be four or five years old and has never been 

 fed grain or eaten out of a box, it is difficult to train them to eat 

 that way or to eat grain at all. Their horses are small and hardy 

 and used to the kind of grazing. If you turn a northern-raised horse 

 out to graze, he will pull up many tufts of grass from the loose soil 

 and will eat sand and all and will soon become "sanded" and die. 

 A Florida pony drops these pulled up tufts and looks further. 



But their hogs are the greatest curiosity of all. They are called 

 razor-backs and are long-nosed, long-legged, slim-bodied and can out- 

 run anything on four feet. They run wild until a few weeks before 

 killing time, when a log pen is built out in the woods and a trail 

 of corn is laid up to and into the pen, where they are trapped and 

 are fed corn for a while. Their meat is excellent. They like to 

 sleep, in moist places, at the edge of water, and this is often fatal 

 to them, as an alligator will slip up on them and awake them. Be- 

 fore they can start to run a blow from his tail will send them far 

 out into the water and piggy's days are numbered. Bears also like 

 to eat them, but they prefer berries and tender palmetto shoots. 



If the men used the same industry that you men do they ought 

 to get along well, but they do not have to work very hard for a 

 living and get to be rather shiftless. Their fuel is free for the gath- 

 ering, their clothing bills small, and their tools cheap. Their plows 

 are small cast-iron affairs, but are better than steel ones, for that 

 soil. They cultivate with a sweep that you men could not keep iu 

 the ground but they can shave with one. What you would pay 

 for a horse collar would buy several sets of their pony harness. 



Taken all round, the ''cracker" farmer is a happy, hospitable, 

 honest fellow, with his beautiful lake-dotted country, with the 

 clearest blue sky overhead, and with the balmy j-alt-ladened breezes 

 from the Atlantic and the Gulf, with the added fragrance of the 

 pines keeping him away well and always hungry, his lines would 

 indeed seem to have fallen in pleasant places. 



FARM LTFE. 



By MRS. ISRAKL M. KAUFFMAN, Belhrillc. Pa. 



By farm life, I do not mean mere farm existence. I mean the real 

 farm life, the spirit of push and energy that helps us to overcome 

 all obstacles and keeps us on the farm because we love it. 



Success in anything depends so much on the spirit in which we 



