ORANGE CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 159 



Best is a very superior fruit. If trees be budded to this fine 

 variety the fruit will be equally good. We send too many poor 

 oranges to market. Were all oranges as good as WolfskilPs 

 Best, the market would be much better and prices would rule 

 higher. Mr. Childs can show accounts of sales of oranges in 

 San Francisco, when some lots of fine fruit brought forty dollars 

 per thousand, while other lots brought only ten dollars per 

 thousand on the same day ; therefore it would pay to bud the 

 orange, even to the best Los Angeles seedlings. Early fruiting 

 is one advantage of budding. Budded trees produce fruit three 

 or four years earlier than seedlings. He showed four oranges 

 taken from a tree that will be four years old from the bud next 

 month, and the bud was put on a two-year-old China lemon 

 root. The tree produced about sixty oranges this year. It has 

 received no extra attention. It produced fourteen oranges last 

 year, and two oranges two years ago. This variety (the Medi- 

 terranean Sweet) is a fine large orange, and the tree is almost 

 entirely thornless. A Florida horticulturist had taken the po- 

 sition that it would pay to cut thorns from the orange tree, in 

 order to save the fruit from being punctured and ruined. The 

 fruit of this tree is not damaged from this cause. About one- 

 half of the budded fruit contains no seed. It is not yet known 

 whether or not the budded orange will bear transportation better 

 than the seedling, but the fruit is solid and finely organized (of 

 the Mediterranean Sweet), while the seedling is more spongy, 

 especially late in the season. The question as to whether the 

 fine varieties are dwarfs or not, is an important one. A six- 

 year-old Mediterranean Sweet on China lemon root measures 

 seven feet in hight, and is otherwise as large in proportion, 

 showing no signs of being a dwarf. An imported tree, six years 

 old, is seven feet^high, from six to seven feet through the top, 

 and the branches come out one foot from the ground. It pro- 

 duced more than one hundred oranges last year, all of which 

 were large and fine. 



"The following estimate was submitted: Plant two-year-old 

 budded trees, about seventy-five per acre. In four years from 

 the bud, or two years from planting, the trees will bear from 

 fifty to sixty oranges each. At one cent each they will yield 



