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It may be worth while to quote the words of an eminent 

 Florida grower upon this point. He says : " Do not let any 

 man or number of men in a pomological convention induce 

 you to establish a seedling orange grove. If you do, you 

 will some of these fine days wake up from a Eip Yan 

 Winkle dream and find yourself as far behind the age 

 and times as he is represented to have been. No two 

 seedling orange trees will ever produce fruit exactly alike. 

 Consequently your fruit will become promiscuous and varir 

 able in character and quality. You know what bad busi- 

 ness that is. Your neighbours, who have selected known 

 and uniform varieties, will find a more ready demand and 

 sale at full 50 per cent, advance on what you can get for 

 your mixed promiscuous fruit. Besides budded trees fruit 

 much earlier than seedlings. We choose certain standard 

 varieties, noted for their fruitfulness and excellence, and 

 reject all others. Then we bud on two-year old seedling 

 stocks, and invariably get fruit in two years. Now, 

 seedling trees may be eight, nine, or even ten years in 

 coming into bearing, and after all this delay one only gets 

 20 dollars per thousand for them, while 40 to 50 dollars per 

 thousand come easily for our selected varieties. They are 

 nearly twice as fruitful as the seedlings, and in some in-, 

 stances produce four times as much. We bud the Navel 

 (that is the Bahia), St. Michael, the Blood Orange, and the 

 Mandarin. The sooner your Calif ornian fruit-growers 

 understand this the better it will be for them." 



So much for making a judicious selection of two or three 

 sorts and growing them only. Which are these to be ? 

 And are there no nameless fruits here and there in the 

 Colony which are good enough for the purpose ? 



It is perfectly true that amid the multitude of seedlings 

 which have arisen here growers have, as was to be expected, 

 had the luck to raise a few good sorts equal to many that 

 are preconized and made so much of in Australia and 

 Florida. Perhaps one in a couple of thousand may be 

 worth perpetuating, and the lucky raisers who can bring 

 them forward as equal to the Bahia, the Mediterranean 

 Sweet, or the small St. Michael, and find their judgment 

 endorsed by experienced buyers, had better at once dis- 

 tinguish them by a name and give them a permanent 



