SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



mills. With the same ideal of new values for Southern 

 land, Crosby has worked out different conclusions. To a 

 ripe old age, this tower of energy, a big man with the 

 chest of a prizefighter and a fighter's spirit, has battled 

 for rosin and turpentine, Satsuma oranges, and tung 

 oil, crops to diversify local agriculture. A stout believer 

 in the small farmer on small holdings, he planted tung 

 trees on thirty-five hundred acres of cutover land and 

 sold quarter sections all in good faith. When these ex- 

 periments failed he shouldered the responsibility, going 

 back and pulling the pine stumps which he fed to his 

 wood-rosin factory to help make good his personal loss. 



About the same time serious work on increasing the 

 nut harvest began in Florida where, at the University, 

 Dr. Charles E. Abbott made a painstaking study of the 

 fruit bud development. B. F. Williamson of Gainesville, 

 to whom the tung industry in this country owes much, 

 began his first careful selection of seeds from the most 

 fruitful trees. He started one of the pioneer nurseries 

 which sold young stock not only in this country but to 

 South America, Africa, and other 'round-the-world 

 points. During its infancy, Dr. Henry A. Gardiner of 

 Washington, possibly our first authority on paint oils, 

 did a great deal to instruct the coatings industry on the 

 usefulness of tung, and Charles C. Concannon, then 

 head of the Chemical Division of the Department of 

 Commerce, was indeed a friend in need. 



The pioneers learned the fussy habits of the tung 

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