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tropical fruits, and that the road to a big competence was assured 

 to every man who had the courage to forsake the exhausted 

 agricultural resources and the overburdened labour market of his 

 own country and turn the virgin sod and cultivate the succulent 

 orange of Florida. Further, the scenery is depicted in a most 

 extravagant style, and statements were made which aj)peared 

 only intended to entrap the guileless emigrant. Mr. Parkinson 

 then divided his subject into seven parts, and treated successively 

 on the climate and health of Florida, its soil, the value of land, 

 the cultivation of orange and market garden products, its social 

 aspect, general appearance, and some of the results which have 

 attended emigration thereto. The temperature during the day 

 in summer averaged, in the inland towns, 92 degrees in the 

 shade, though the mornings and evenings were always cool. 

 Occasionally frost was experienced. The chief complaints from 

 which residents suffered were chills and fever, ague and swamp 

 fever, and as a rule Englishmen only enjoyed moderate health 

 in the State. The greater part of Florida was nothing but a 

 long, flat sandbank, besi)iinkled with what was known as ham- 

 mock lands. Most of the land could not, in the opinion of the 

 lecturer, ever be productive. The South is occupied for hundreds 

 of square miles by swamps. Lake Okeechobee was a mournful 

 picture of watery desolation, and the whole of the extreme South 

 was practically uninhabited, and likely to remain so. The value 

 of land was then discussed, and Mr. Parkinson pointed out the 

 care and knowledge that were required in purchasing land in a 

 suitable locality. A considerable part of the paper was naturally 

 devoted to the question of orange cultivation. It requhed a 

 more absolute knowledge of the country, soil and climate, to 

 start a successful grove than to run a large English farm. The 

 mode of cultivation and the various risks which the planter had 

 to run were pointed out, special mention being made of the dis- 

 astrous work which a single night's frost might accomplish in 

 an orange grove. It was usually seven to ten years before the 

 orange plant yielded anything like fruit when planted from the 

 seed. In some few cases considerable profits were made from 

 the cultivation of tomatoes, spring beans, cucumbers, &c., but 

 unless the grower places his ]products in the Northern markets 

 at the proper time, it is likely that he may suffer serious loss. 

 Cotton and Indian corn are cultivated, and some sugar. Mr. 

 Parkinson adverted to the schemes for [draining and reclaiming 

 the vast body of marshy land which forms the Southern portion, 

 and for the construction of railways through this country ; but 

 his opinion was that the enterprises were of an impracticable 

 nature. The atmosphere in those parts is heavy with pestilence 

 and fever-breeding malaria, arising from the rank decayed vege- 

 table deposits of centuries exposed to the direct influence of a 



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