76 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



perimented extensively and expensively considering 

 results with the above policy, and where others 

 were pursuing the same policy he has advised them 

 to try clean culture or garden crops on a part of 

 the grove, and in every instance where the land 

 has been kept thoroughly cultivated the trees have 

 doubled, in size and thrift, those allowed to be left 

 to the mercy of the weeds and grass. 



Another result should be considered in this con- 

 nection. Where grass and weeds are allowed to 

 grow in the grove they are generally killed by the 

 frost during the fall or winter. In this condition 

 they absorb and part with moisture very readily, ab- 

 sorbing moisture when the atmosphere is warmer 

 than the ground, and yielding it up when the at- 

 mosphere is cooler than the ground or the wind is 

 blowing. But to part with moisture is to part with 

 heat and increase the cold. In some sections of 

 Europe, before the invention of ice machines, con- 

 siderable ice was collected and stored away where 

 the general temperature was only 40. The freez- 

 ing was induced by simply covering over lightly 

 and surrounding the ice ponds with wet straw. The 

 wind passing through the wet straw took up from 

 the exposed and larger surface of the straw its 

 moisture together with its heat and left the water to 

 freeze. To leave any dry straw, weeds, or litter on 

 the ground during the winter only intensifies the 

 cold and invites the frost. The writer knows of sev- 

 eral beautiful groves that were entirely frozen down 



