64 ORANGE CULTURE IN FLORIDA. 



Cold and heat are nature's great agents in 

 breaking down rocks, disintegrating earths, and so 

 converting into soluble manures for the use of 

 plants what otherwise would be useless for plant - 

 life. In higher latitudes the effect of cold is to 

 suspend circulation during the winter months, in 

 order that the soil may store up during winter an 

 ample amount of plant-food for the great effort of 

 Nature to make fruit It is owing to this that vege- 

 tation in cold regions puts forth more rapidly dur- 

 ing the short summers, and that fruit trees in such 

 regions are so uniform in the production of fruit. 

 This hint should be taken by the growers of or- 

 anges in the semi-tropics. When their trees fail to 

 put on a sufficient quantity of fruit, let them manure 

 in the fall or early winter sufficiently soon for the 

 manure to reach the roots before the buds begin to 

 swell. Thus stimulated, the bush that would only 

 put forth the less effort and produce a leaf or 

 branch may be forced to the greater effort to pro- 

 duce fruit. This fall manuring might prove inju- 

 rious to a young tree, with wood too immature for 

 the production of fruit, by forcing it to put forth 

 shoots so early as to be nipped by a late frost. But 

 it would have the opposite effect on a bearing tree, 

 by forcing the production of blossom and fruit in- 

 stead of tender branches, as both blossom and fruit 

 of the orange will stand much more cold than the 

 newly started leaves and branches. I have not infre- 

 quently seen considerable frost fall upon both bios- 



