FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
15 
These things have not come in the trop¬ 
ics to any extent because there were too 
few people. But they will come and the < 
question which I wish you to look at to¬ 
day is whether the horticulturists of Flor¬ 
ida are not really destined to be the pio¬ 
neers in this new horticulture of the trop¬ 
ics. 
They have a climate in which they can 
work with their own hands all the year 
round. They have around them in in¬ 
creasing numbers each year the people of 
means. They have large numbers of 
young people to recruit their ranks from. 
They have a public more willing to take 
new fruits than the world ever saw be¬ 
fore. That public goes and comes from 
* the great centers of a great country which 
is of all the countries in the world the 
greatest fruit eating one. The drift of 
dietetics is towards a greater vegetable 
diet among people of middle age and they 
are the people who have their hands on 
the money. 
I am of course aware that many here 
come from parts of the State which are 
too frequently visited by frosts to have 
the same interest in strictly tropical plants 
which the citizens of Miami and vicin¬ 
ity have but the question of frost and pro¬ 
tection from it is connected with every 
agriculture no matter where you travel 
on the earth’s surface. 
What are the horticulturists trying to 
do on the bleak plains of Canada? Pro¬ 
duce a plum which will ripen before the 
frost can get it in September. What are 
the almond growers of California stay¬ 
ing up nights for? Waiting to see if the 
late spring frost has killed their Jordan 
almond blossoms and spared their IXL 
variety. What is the experiment station 
in Luleo, Sweden, doing? By extensive 
breeding experiments, trying to produce 
a shorter season barley for Lapland. 
So, although most of us try to push 
into the background, when we talk with 
Northerners, the question of frost, in¬ 
stead of admitting that it is a factor con¬ 
nected with all agriculture except that ac¬ 
tually below the isotherm of 32 F., it is 
a fact that Florida horticulturists will 
always be striving to produce hardier 
forms which can be grown farther north; 
and that with their production will come 
wider areas of their cultivation just as the 
production by Prof. Saunders of the 
early-maturing Marquis wheat by hybrid¬ 
ization and selection extended the area 
* 
of this cereal tremendously in the Cana¬ 
dian Northwest. 
But still, what has all this to do with 
horticulture and its development in the 
real tropics? Just this. The tremendous 
stimulus of a great people of 100,000,000 
consuming the horticultural products of 
the tropics. Nothing great that I know 
of started large. It had its little begin¬ 
ning. I had the pleasure in 1898 of talk¬ 
ing with Captain Baker in Port Antonio 
and of hearing from his own lips the 
story of his first schooner load of frying 
pans which he took to the West Indies 
and of how in desperation he bought a 
load of bananas and peddled them in Bos¬ 
ton. The banana was so rare a fruit in 
Germany and France in 1895 that three 
of us American students in Bonn dis¬ 
graced ourselves by laughing out loud in 
the course of a serious botanical disser¬ 
tation of how to eat one. The great 
American public took up the banana. It 
