AND AGRICULTURAL CAPABILITIES. 51 



The different species of mulberry grow here to perfection from root, 

 cutting, or graft; in leaf from March to October. In time, no doubt, 

 the business will become a regular industry. The company above re- 

 ferred to intends to engage largely in the culture of that valuable dye, 

 indigo. About the year 1770 this article formed the principal export 

 from Florida, and the old works still to be seen in the vicinity of New 

 Smyrna, on Indian Biver, indicate the vast extent of the plantations 

 devoted to this enterprise. 



FRUITS. 



The most promising and fascinating industry, now absorbing atten- 

 tion, more particularly in East and South Florida, is the cultivation of 

 fruits, of which the citrus family takes the first rank. This group com- 

 prises all the varieties of the orange, citron, lemon, lime, and shaddock, 

 numbering more than a hundred. 



Dr. Sickler, who spent six years in Italy, and paid great attention to 

 the kinds and culture of the citrus, published at Weimar, in 1815, a quarto 

 volume, called Volkommene Orangerie Gartner, in which he describes 

 seventy-four sorts. He arranges the whole into two classes, and these 

 classes into divisions and subdivisions, without regard to their botanical 

 distinctions or species, as follows: 



Lemons : Sorts. 



Cedrats, or citrons 4 



Round lemons 6 



Pear-shaped lemons 11 



Cylindrical lemons 4 



Gourd-shaped lemons 2 



Wax lemons 5 



Lumies lemons 8 



Cedrat, lemons or citronate 6 



Limes 4 



Oranges: 



Bitter oranges 6 



Sour oranges 6 



Sweet oranges 12 



Few other classes of fruits are more easily propagated than the citrus, 

 and all of the species may be rapidly increased and produced either by 

 seeds, cuttings, layers, grafting, or budding, the lime being the most 

 difficult and the citron the most easy of propagation. They differ from 

 deciduous fruits in the respect that like always produces like, the seed 

 of every variety invariably producing its kind. Cuttings of thrifty wood, 

 two years old, strike fibers as rapidly as younger wood, though the 

 mode of propagating almost universally adopted in Florida is by bud- 

 ding upon young stocks from the nursery, or from the larger stocks ob- 

 tained from the forests. The citrus family of fruits is supposed to have 

 originated in the warmer parts of Asia, and to have derived its name 

 from the town of Citron, in Judea, though it has been cultivated from 

 time immemorial in middle and southern Europe, and is now cultivated 



