ORANGE CULTURE. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PROFIT OF ORANGE GROWING, 



When compared to the profit arising from other kinds of business, is so 

 large that a statement of facts is often withheld because the truth 

 seems fabulous to those who have only had experience in the cultiva- 

 tion of other kinds of fruits. Those engaged in the business consider 

 each tree, so soon as it is in healthy and vigorous bearing, worth one 

 hundred dollars. Indeed the annual yield of such a tree will pay a 

 large interest on the one hundred dollars from ten to an hundred and 

 in some instances one hundred and fifty per cent, per annum. Now if 

 we take into consideration that from forty to one hundred trees are 

 grown on an acre, the yield is immense. In the quiet country, breath- 

 ing its pure atmosphere, with fresh fruits and vegetables from January 

 to January, with milk, butter, honey and poultry, the product of his 

 farm, and accessories to his grove, the man who has once brought his 

 trees into successful bearing, can enjoy all these and much more 

 besides, having at his command an income quite equal to that com- 

 manded by owners of blocks of well improved real estate in our towns 

 and cities, with not one-tenth part of the original cost of city invest- 

 ments. Or, if the owner chooses, he is at liberty to go abroad without 

 fear of the incendiaries' . torch, or the failure of commercial firms. 

 And even if a frost should come severe enough to cut down full grown 

 trees and but one such frost has come in the history of Florida the 

 owner of such a grove has but to wait quietly for three years, and out 

 of the ruin will come a second fortune as large as the first, and without 

 the cost of brick, mortar and workmen. 



The age to which the orange tree lives, from three hundred to four 



