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3i8 Editors Letter- Box. 



I am told that quinces grow well ; and but few other fruits do that are common 

 at the North. Pears, apples, cherries, plums, currants, raspberries, blackberries, 

 strawberries, gooseberries, fail ; and I do not see much hope that any of the 

 grapes that succeed with us will do so here. There is a sort called the St. 

 Augustine grape, and the Scuppernong, that thrive. I saw in Mr. Dumas' gar- 

 den a pecan-tree, ten years from the seed, as big as my body, which has borne 

 one crop. If one grows so, why not grow an orchard, and make a profitable 

 crop .'' In the same garden was a thrifty Madeira-nut-tree ; also a variety of 

 oranges grown from the seed, and producing fruit at ten years of age. Those 

 grafted produced in five or six years. The scale-insect, which was so destruc- 

 tive fifteen or twenty years ago, has disappeared. 



Peaches do not appear to be affected by any disease. There are some exceed- 

 ingly thrifty orchards in the interior of the State, the fruit of which is largely fed 

 to the pigs. Some of it is dried, and some distilled ; but much is wasted as 

 valueless. 



One of the pests of grape-growers, and the enemy of all small berries when 

 they do happen to succeed, is the flocks of mocking-birds. The skin of the 

 Scuppernong is so tough, that it withstands their attacks. 



There is a fruit here, now ripe, called the Japan plum, which produces well, 

 and is eatable, not excellent. 



Of wild fruits, the running-blackberry is the most common. It is ripe in April, 

 and quite abundant. Of wild flowers, the yellow jasmin is most common in 

 spring, making the woods fragrant. In this vicinity, their season is past. There 

 is a red jasmin, not so fragrant, but extremely handsome. The yellow jasmin is 

 medicinal. The mere handling of the blossom, and smelling the odor, by some 

 persons, produces a sort of paralysis, or stupor. 



There is one of the azalea family, quite common, and very showy at this sea- 

 son, in low, rich places. The blossoms of the dogwood {Cor?ius Florida) have 

 already disappeared. These, it is said, blossom in the shad season everywhere. 

 Their season has been here since February commenced ; and so has the season 

 of garden-planting. Field-corn, in some places, is now up, so as to show the rows. 

 By the by, do you know the fashion here is to plant the corn, and plough the land 

 after the corn is up ? That is, two furrows of a little one-mule plough are turned 

 together, and the seed planted upon this little ridge of fresh earth, and left to grow, 

 while " the middles " remain green strips of grass or weeds until the owner finds 

 time to plough them out. A crop of ten bushels per acre is considered a good 

 one. Of course it cannot be grown for profit, when a crop of tw'o or three hun- 

 dred bushels of sweet-potatoes can be grown upon similar land. 



The great want of Florida at this time is capital in the hands of Northern men, 

 who would make as great a change here in this wilderness as they have in all the 

 Western States, and probably with a much more certain and immediate profit. 

 I am certain that a great field is open to enterprise. It is a disgrace to this age 

 that it has remained so long untilled. The time has come for a change ; so it 

 has to close this letter. 



Solon Robinson. 



