THE NEW EARTH 



cessed " as it is called, repacked, and sent back 

 to the United States as imported French 

 prunes. Some hint of the recent remarkable 

 development in other lines is seen in the fact 

 that, according to the last census, the apple 

 trees of the United States in the ten-year pe- 

 riod, 1890-1900, increased in number more than 

 eighty million. Eleven years ago, in 1894, 

 California sent out a little over five thousand 

 car-loads of oranges, something like a million 

 six hundred thousand boxes. The shipment 

 now is about thirty thousand cars a year, over 

 ten million boxes. Raisins, lemons, olives, 

 dried fruits, canned fruits in this, the largest 

 fruit-producing state in the Union, have also 

 remarkably increased in production. 



But one of the most interesting of all the 

 horticultural developments of the period of the 

 New Earth has been the production of figs. 

 Figs of an inferior quality had long been grown 

 in the United States. Even in colonial days 

 the fig was introduced, but none of the figs of 

 this or later periods could compete with the 

 Smyrna fig. The reason for this lay in the 

 powerful influence of a wasp. In the region 

 round about Smyrna, in Asia Minor, the fig is 



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