BUDDED TREES OR SEEDLINGS. 



53 



there in his grove, and these latter are decidedly smaller and 

 less thrifty trees, though of the same age. 



In fact, the further one goes into the subject, the more 

 majestically does the once maligned budded tree loom up and 

 the seedling retire into the back-ground to be brought forward 

 again simply as stock, in which character we have no word to 

 say against them. 



Seedlings versus budded trees ? Why, the seedlings have 

 no case at all. It has been proven that it does not grow larger 

 or bear more fruit than the budded tree, and when we look at 

 the question financially its case is more hopeless than ever. 



Why is it that we dig and delve and toil to make an orange 

 grove ? Truly, that it may return our labor in good solid coin, 

 and that as soon as may be. 



Did any one ever hear of a tree budded from a bearing one 

 that did not fruit until it Avas eight, ten, twenty years from the 

 bud? Yet the two first dates named are those the seedlings 

 usually attain before they bear at all, while it is not uncommon 

 for them to reach the age of fifteen and twenty years before 

 bearing a single orange, and sometimes they are forever barren. 

 Very few settlers there are, even with very limited means, who 

 could not struggle along somehow, if their trees could be made 

 to yield a small return in four or five years, but W^ho, if com- 

 pelled to wait a return for ten or twelve years, would fall down 

 worsted in the fight and suffer a financial shipwreck. In short, 

 as a well-known orange grower emphatically asserts : 



"It is universally recognized that budding shortens the 

 period before fruiting. Is not this, then, a strong reason finan- 

 cially, why we should adopt the budded system? My own 

 experience teaches me the necessity of budding. I can see no 

 dwarfing tendency or results ; on the contrary, my budded trees 

 are larger than seedlings of the same age, and "the fruit is cer- 

 tainly as good. I have not been able to see that the production 

 is fewer in numbers. I therefore give my unqualified opinion 

 that it will not only pay to bud the orange tree, but that as 

 intelligent men we cannot afford to do otherwise. 



There is also another strong argument in favor of budded 



