FRUITS FROM THE TROPICS 303 



Here is a field as yet scarcely entered and one 

 that offers almost unbounded possibilities. The 

 orange industry is the great fruit industry of 

 California to-day, as it is of the Gulf States. In 

 both of these regions experimenters should take 

 up the work. It is at least possible that new and 

 strange citrus fruits may thus be brought into 

 being. 



As a single hint suggestive of possibilities, let 

 me recall that the very earliest plum in existence 

 to-day is probably the one that I developed by 

 successive hybridizations which ultimately intro- 

 duced and blended the strains of six species in- 

 cluding some of the latest plums. 



Possibly, then, the problem of developing an 

 orange resistant to cold one that may be grown 

 not merely along the Gulf but along the Great 

 Lakes as well may be solved in similar fashion. 

 It seems paradoxical to suggest that the blending 

 of oranges from a half a dozen tropical and 

 subtropical climates India, Arabia, northern 

 Africa, Brazil, Florida, southern California 

 might produce a fruit adapted to the climate of, 

 let us say, Missouri or Ohio; yet the case of 

 my early plum, descended from late ancestors, 

 suggests that this idea is not altogether chi- 

 merical. This work will be greatly simplified 

 by the fact that we now have an orange 



