194 HORTICULTURAL MANUAL. 



mainly near the St. Johns River, that gave us the cheapest 

 and best oranges known at that time to history. 



The orange to reach its highest perfection must, like 

 Indian-corn, have warm nights as well as days. Hence 

 the great supply from that source from 1880 to 1894 

 mainly shut out competition during late fall and early 

 winter over a large part of the Union east of the Rocky 

 Mountains. But the great freeze of 1894-95 cut off this 

 supply suddenly, as most of the bearing trees were killed 

 down to the latitude of Tampa. The very conditions of 

 air that favor the development of the best quality of the 

 orange, and favor early ripening, brought about the great 

 destruction of trees in 1894-95. The writer was in Florida 

 at the time of the February freeze which caught the trees 

 with young foliage and tender shoots in a condition of 

 growth. Peach-, mulberry-, and even black wild cherry- 

 trees were killed at the same time, and wistaria vines of 

 many years' growth that are hardy far north where the 

 foliage is dormant in winter. The writer has experienced 

 a greater degree of cold in the Salt River valley in Arizona 

 that failed to injure the wood of orange-trees, except at 

 the points of growth, and to cause the leaves to drop, as 

 the trees in winter are in a relatively dormant and ripened 

 condition. 



At present extensive orange- plan ting in Florida is con- 

 fined to the parts south of the latitute of Tampa. Without 

 doubt the denudation of the timber-belt of pine, sixty miles 

 wide in southern Georgia, by the lumbermen, turpentine 

 and rosin operators, and fire, has had much to do with the 

 destruction of orange-trees in central Florida since 1886. 

 Orange-growing on the higher table-lands of Cuba at this 

 time is making rapid advances with many favoring condi- 

 tions. During the winter of 1894-95, the writer left the 

 frozen orange orchards of Flordia to investigate orange- 



