70 

 CHAPTER XIX. 



OILS, PERFUMES, EXTRACTS, &C. FROM THE CITRUS. 



The subjects mentioned above need to be carefully considered by 

 the orange growers of Florida. In Europe the manufacture of these 

 products of the citrus is about equal in value to the exported fruit. 

 Essential oil is distilled from the tender shoots, rinds of the fruit and 

 leaves of the trees. The most delicate perfumes and oils are obtained 

 from the flowers, especially from the flower of the wild orange. Mar- 

 malade is made from the sour fruit. Citric acid and concentrated 

 lemon juice from the lemon, while the citron yields that most 

 delicate conserve, bearing the same name, for which we pay high 

 prices. Many of these delicate and truly valuble products of the 

 orange can be prepared on the orange plantation at comparatively 

 little cost. It would be better if some enterprising firm would locate 

 at Jacksonville or some other orange center, and combine in one estab- 

 lishment all these interests. There would be no difficulty in obtaining 

 ample material for a large establishment, even thus early in our 

 orange growing. These materials leaves, tender shoots, flowers, young 

 fruit dropped, imperfect fruit and sour fruit would alone, if such an 

 establishment were erected, pay for the cultivation of the grove and 

 leave the fruit as a clear gain. 



Such a business could be a source of vast wealth to the firm which 

 would engage in it with sufficient capital and skill. These articles 

 manufactured from the citrus would be put in a durable form and 

 made ready for exportation to any part of the world. With this 

 profit added to the profit arising from the sale of the fruit, at one cent 

 for the orange and a half a cent for the lemon, the citrus crop in 

 Florida alone could, in a score of years, be made to exceed the value 

 of the entire cotton crop grown in the South. Florida certainly has a 

 bright future before her if her sons are wise enough to labor for that 

 future. In her broad acres there is ample room, not only for her 

 natural and adopted sons, but for the hundreds of thousands of their* 

 fellow citizens to whom these sons of Florida extend a hearty invita- 

 tion to come and occupy with them these broad acres, this genial 

 climate and this vast wealth, enough for all, and quite as good as can 

 be found this side of Heaven. 



