628 



THE V SA Y. 



looks as if our friends were getting tangled up between 

 the "golden chain" and the "golden rod." — C. S.Val- 

 entine. 



Satsuma Orange. — In reply to your correspondent's 

 question as to the Satsuma, in Aug. issue (p. 4<3i), per- 

 mit me to say, I am not a stranger to the trifoliata 

 stock. I have also worked the Satsuma on the sour 

 orange, the sweet, and on the lemon. The peculiar 

 death cold, so still, on the morning of March 17, i8go, 

 was no respecter of varieties, when it caught them with 

 the full flow of sap up. Trees which had been irrigated 

 had been growing all winter ; all the stored forces of the 

 whole tree had been pushed into the new wood in the 

 top. I had thrifty Satsumas well set with oranges. 

 They were killed branch and root, as thoroughly as the 

 lightning recently killed bignonias fifteen feet high for 

 me. There was a strong similarity in the way the 

 leaves withered. The Allamanda regiua had been in 

 constant bloom for eleven months, and had hundreds of 

 blooms the i6th of March. The vines or canes were 

 more than an inch in diameter. The cold killed it. I 

 cut it close to the ground : since then it had grown ten 

 feet high, was full of its pure yellow bloom. The sheet 

 of lightning swept over it, and it withered away, burned 

 by heat. But as " lightning never strikes twice in the 

 same place," we are devoutly thankful to a merciful 

 Providence which spared our lives, and it seemed the 

 converse is sometimes true of the mediaeval monk's 

 saying: " Mediii: vita- in morte seemiis." When the 

 breath of electricity passed along one side of an orange 

 tree the leaves and fruit were burned, and outwardly 

 looked like the burning of frost — only this difference — 

 the electricity caused the more rapid decay of leaf and 

 fruit. 



By the cold of March 17th, I saw "willows by the 

 water courses," which were a quarter of a century old, 

 killed to the ground ; maples and gums which had been 

 in leaf a month badly frozen back ; also hickories, 

 pecans and persimmons. In the same conditions, un- 

 der a vigorous growth with a full flow of sap, a hickory 

 would stand no more than an orange, and scarcely 

 more than a tomato. The only Satsuma which I think 

 is worth growing is a seedling from a single, one of 

 the first fruits I ever saw of that variety. It has great 

 stamina, is prolific, and not a shrub, but a tree, nor is it 

 more liable to attacks of insect pests than the ordinary 

 seedling, while the imported bears the palm for a home 

 for soft scale, and under favorable weather, for the 

 mealy bug. The fruit, too, of the seedling, under the 

 analytical scale of the State Horticultural Society 

 would leave the fruit from the imported variety in the 

 low list comparison. Not unfrequently looks or color 

 go a great way in sales. I knew a hybrid of a tangierine 

 and the old rough loose-rind wild lemon once to sell in 

 Boston for $10 per box. They were flat and insipid, 

 but they were red. Two boxes broke the market; and 

 though that was twelve years age, I do not know of a 

 sale ever being made again. A few boxes of Satsumas 

 would do the same thing. Satsumas planted at the 



same time, side by side, with the Jaffa and Majorca, 

 with precisely the same treatment, do not produce a 

 fifth as much in net results. — Lyman Phelps. 



Size of Satsumas. — Did not J. H. McF. (page 491) 

 make a slip of the pen in his account of the size of the 

 Satsumas ? An orange so small that 625 only a little 

 more than filled half a box could not be much larger 

 than a large hickory nut or a black walnut. The Sat- 

 suma, as I have seen it, averages larger than the Man- 

 darin, which usually runs from 200 to 350 to the box. 

 I do not think that I have ever seen a Satsuma smaller 

 than 300 to the box, and most of them would run up to 

 the neighborhood of 200 per box. 



As to its hardiness, last spring's experience in Florida 

 furnishes no criterion by which to estimate its true 

 standing. No tree is hardy when in full vigor of growth, 

 and every twig tipped with young tender growth. A 

 few days after the frost of March 17, I was out in a 

 large hammock near here. The tops of the hickories, 

 sweet gum and other deciduous trees, which had just 

 got well leaved out before the frost, looked \as though a 

 fire had swept through them. On my own place fig 

 trees were killed almost to the ground by a temperature 

 of 26°, which only lasted part of one night, that went 

 through the freeze of January, 1886, unhurt, when the 

 ground froze, in the shade, for four days, and the mer- 

 cury played up and down between 20 and 30 all that 

 time ! As the Satsuma trees were growing vigorously 

 at the time of the freeze in March, 1890, and covered 

 with new tender growth, they could not possibly escape 

 injury. Yet they suffered less than most varieties under 

 similar conditions. — W. C. Steele, Florida. 



A Yeoman of Henry Seventh's Time. — My father 

 was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only he 

 had a farm of or £i,x, by year at the uttermost, 



and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen 

 men He had walked for an hundred sheep, and my 

 mother milked 30 kine. He was able, and did find the 

 king a harness, with himself and his horse, while he 

 came to the place that he should receive the king's 

 wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness 

 when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to 

 school, or else I had not been able to preach before the 

 king's majesty now. He married my sisters with £'^'1, 

 or 20 nobles a piece, so that he brought them up in god- 

 liness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor 

 neighbors. And some alms he gave to the poor, and all 

 this he did of the said farm. Where he that now hath 

 it, payeth /161 by the year, or more, and is not able to 

 do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his chil- 

 dren, or give a cup of drink to the poor. 



In my time my poor father was as diligent to teach 

 me to shoot, as to learn me other things, and so I think 

 other men did their children ; he taught me how to draw, 

 how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with 

 strength of arms as divers other nations do, but with 

 strength of the body. I had my bows bought me ac- 

 cording to my age and strength ; as I increased in them, 

 so my bows were made bigger and bigger, for men shall 



