MISCELLANEOUS. 143 



his practice would soon be gone," will be re-echoed all over 

 the land. 



There are thousands of persons in the United States 

 who have never seen an orange, and other thousands who 

 never obtain one, except at almost probibitory prices. 

 Some day, as the number of oranges placed on the market 

 increases, these people will be reached, and oranges placed 

 in their hands at the prices for which the more fortunate 

 citizens of our Eastern cities obtain them at present. 



It is quite true, as often stated, that thousands upon 

 thousands of orange trees are being planted all over Flor- 

 ida; but it is safe to add that fully one third of those 

 planted will never come to bearing maturity ; many will 

 fail from wrong treatment ; many will be abandoned by 

 non-persevering owners ; and many more will die because 

 they have been planted too far north, and their strength 

 will be exhausted by too frequent frosts. 



But even supposing that every tree planted came to ma- 

 turity and bore its load of golden fruit, and that every 

 foot of ground on that one twentieth part of Florida, 

 which is all that can ever be utilized for orange culture, 

 should bear its dozen oranges, what would all that amount 

 to when divided among the nearly fifty-eight millions of 

 inhabitants of the United States, such being the population 

 of the present year, 1886 a population immense now, and 

 doubling every thirty years ? The population will increase 

 almost indefinitely ; the year 1940 will witness a popula- 

 tion in the United States of more than two hundred mill- 

 ions. But nature has fixed the limit of the orange-bearing 

 belt in the United States, and nature's laws are irrevocable. 



The vast markets of the West and the Northwest have 

 never yet received an adequate supply of oranges, the ma- 

 jority of them none at all, and it will be many years be- 

 fore the supply will meet the demand. 



