TWENTY-SIXTH SESSION. 
111 ! 
My own grove is situated in the northern part of the state, thirty miles west 
of Jacksonville, near the Georgia line. Here the thermometer went to eight 
above zero, w T hich was six degrees colder than had previously occurred in the 
seventeen years that I have lived in the same locality. And, with your per- 
mission, I will refer briefly to my own experiences under these extreme con- 
ditions. And in the first place I will say that few people outside of those act- 
ively engaged in the culture of citrous fruits— and even not all of those— have- 
a proper conception of the tenacity of life of the roots of a well established' 
orange tree. The tops may be repeatedly frozen back to the ground, and the 
trees, deemed worthless, abandoned to shift for themselves, and yet they 
will sprout up from the crown, or, if the crown is killed, from the crown 
roots, and these sprouts can by proper attention again be transformed into 
vigorous bearing trees. 
In the severe freezes that we experienced during the winter of 1894-1895, 
at that time the most severe that had occurred in sixty years, there were,, 
amongst other trees that I had frozen to the ground, several large sweet 
seedling orange trees that were located on an uncultivated portion of my 
grounds. 
These trees, with the exception of being sawed off to the ground, received 
no attention during the year following the freeze, and they were considered 
dead beyond redemption. They showed no sign of a sprout from the roots 
for a full year; but after lying dormant for fourteen months, threw up shoots 
which grew off vigorously, and, apparently, as healthily, as if no freeze had 
ever occurred. 
The fact that the roots of the orange trees are so tenacious of life, leaves 
the main consideration, as far as freezes are concerned,, to be given to the 
tops, for of course, without bearing tops, present or prospective, the roots are 
valueless. One very simple precaution against total loss of the budded por- 
tion of the trunk, and an added safeguard even to that portion of the tree' 
extending above the mound, is to bank the trees with earth, piled cone-shaped, 
around the trunk, in the early winter, and let this mound of earth remain 
until after danger of freezes is over in the spring. It is generally completely 
effective as high up as the mound extends, and, as above indicated, often- 
higher; for, by protecting this lower portion of the trunk from the cold we 
are also protecting it from the direct rays of the morning sun, and a severe- 
cold spell followed by clear weather, and . sunshine, is the worst possible 
combination on the unguarded trunk of an orange tree. 
In different sections throughout the state many experiments have been and 
are being made with artificial heat, permanent and removable coverings, etc.,. 
all having in view the control of temperature during the short, dangerously 
cold snaps that visit us at irregular intervals; sometimes once or twice during 
the winter, and sometimes but once in a period of several years, but which, 
whether frequent or infrequent, accomplish much damage when they do- 
occur. 
On the night of the eighth of February last I had wood fires burning at 
distances of fifteen to sixty feet apart over about twenty-five acres of orange- 
groves and nurseries. These were mostly small fires, arrangement for the 
quick lighting of which had of course been made in advance. These small 
fires were supplemented by larger fires on the north and west, the direction 
from which the wind almost invariably comes during our dangerously cold 
spells. The result obtained from these fires was at the time considered 
