210 FLORIDA FRUITS OLIVES AND PECANS. 



The oldest pecan orchard of which we have any record 

 is in Alabama, and is over fifty years old ; the trees in this 

 orchard now frequently yield three barrels of nuts each 

 in the same season, producing an income, without trouble 

 or expense, save that of gathering the nuts, of one thou- 

 sand dollars annually per acre. 



A barrel contains one hundred and forty-five pounds of 

 nuts, and last year, from Florida trees, they averaged to 

 the producer twenty-three cents per pound by the barrel. 

 But even at only ten cents a pound, one hundred pounds 

 to the tree, and forty trees to the acre, we have a clear 

 profit of four hundred dollars, while the ground that sup- 

 ports these bountiful trees may also yield other crops or 

 feed a herd of cattle. 



There is no other tree that, with so little care, expense, 

 or attention, will yield so much profit. 



Let Florida have her pecan orchards as well as her 

 orange groves. It has already been proved that the one is 

 as valuable as the other, and when the Florida pecan is 

 placed upon the market, as it is certain to be ere long, it 

 will rank with the Florida orange and pine-apple, for no 

 other State can equal her soft-shelled pecans. 



The largest and oldest bearing pecan orchard now in 

 Florida consists of fifty trees, the property of Arthur 

 Brown, of Blackwater, Santa Kosa County ; they are from 

 twenty-five to forty years old, and are the pride of their 

 owner, and, as we can certify, justly so. 



Not only are the trees beautiful in themselves, but their 

 products of several distinct varieties of thin-shelled pecans 

 are all that any one could desire; never has the writer 

 tasted pecans as thin-shelled, tender, and delicious in flavor 

 as those raised in this Blackwater orchard, the pioneer of 

 Florida's future pecan industry. .The nuts from these 

 beautiful trees were on exhibition at the New Orleans Ex- 



