644 THE ORANGE. 



cultivated in Florida many years ago, becoming extinct there, 

 or nearly so by the great freeze of 1835. About 1874 it was 

 again restored, under the name of Washington Navel or Bahia, 

 in trees imported from South America and sent out by the 

 Department of Agriculture at Washington. Fruit large, 

 solid, very juicy, high flavored. Only in exceptional cases 

 are seeds found. Tree prolific, often beginning to bear one 

 year from the bud. Its magnificent size, smooth and silky 

 exterior, delicious flavor, and total absence of seed, have 

 raised it at once to pre-eminence. In California it seems sat- 

 isfactorily productive, but in Florida, unless budded on lime 

 or lemon, or the flow of sap interrupted by partial girdling, 

 the crops are often too light to be remunerative. It is to-day 

 the leading commercial variety of America. 



The same objection generally exists in other navels, such as 

 Sustain, Rivers, Egyptian, Australian, Malta, some from Con- 

 tinental gardens, and a native seedling the Double Im- 

 perial. Flowers are freely produced, but nearly all fall off. 

 By some the trouble has been attributed to exhaustion from 

 too free blooming, or from lack of pollen, which cannot be the 

 cause, seeing that one variety, a cross of Botelha and Sustain, 

 and as free a bloomer as any, always sets, and carries such an 

 enormous crop as to paralyze its energies and arrest its 

 growth. 



MANDARIN ORANGES (CITRUS NOBILIS). 



This appears to be of a race entirely distinct from the 

 common orange, and may have been identical with or sprung 

 from the Suntara group, either indigenous to the northeast- 

 ern border of India, or introduced there long ago from south- 

 ern China. The leaves and blossoms are smaller than those 

 of the common orange, and exhale a peculiar aromatic odor. 

 The branches are slender and the fruit is flattened, with seg- 

 ments loosely adhering, forming a hole in the centre, and en- 

 closed in a smooth and glossy rind of a saffron yellow, easily 

 detached. When fully ripe it is exceedingly juicy and melt- 

 ing, and has become a favorite in European and American 

 markets, where it was unknown until recently. Tree of mod- 

 erate size and nearly destitute of thorns, except when grown 

 from seed, and then very thorny. 



