OKANGES, LEMONS, AND LIMES. 



ORANGES. 



Orange (Citrus aurantium) is a beautiful evergreen tree, bearing often at the 

 same time odoriferous flowers with brilliant and delicious fruit. Oranges are 

 pre-eminent amongst Christmas fruits, and commerce has brought them within the 

 reach of every one. So enormous and regular are the importations that the cultivation 

 of oranges for supplying the market has not been attempted by home growers ; yet 

 oranges of the highest excellence for dessert are produced in glass structures in this 

 country. Mr. T. F. Eivers, Sawbridgeworth, Herts, probably the most extensive 

 cultivator of the orange as a dessert fruit, states: "The delicious little Tangierine 

 orange is comparatively hardy, and may be grown to perfection in a heated orchard 

 house. There is no fruit tree that approaches the orange ; the beauty and profusion of 

 its flowers and the golden fruit set off and relieved by the splendid glossy evergreen 

 foliage combine to place it in the premier rank. My house has about fifty trees in it, 

 studded with golden fruit, and is a special pleasure from the beginning of November, 

 the season when the fruit assumes the rich hue peculiar to healthy oranges. The 

 temperature ranges from 50 to 60, not much above the outside air, the ventilators 

 being open from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, causing no discomfort 

 from heat in the house, and no fear of catching cold on quitting. . . . There is no 

 prettier dish for the dessert than the orange gathered with a stalk of leaves ; the fruit 

 is fresh, fragrant, deliciously juicy, filling a room with its perfume." Home-grown 

 oranges, produced in light, airy, well-heated, and properly-managed structures, are as 

 superior in flavour to imported fruit as our Muscat of Alexandria grapes are to imported 

 clusters of inferior varieties from foreign vineyards. 



VARIETIES. 



Good varieties of oranges are essential for producing the best fruit. The small 

 oranges, such as the Tangierine and Mandarin, have small leaves and stems as well as 

 miniature fruit. They are very delicious, the St. Michael's Tangierine being the 



