142 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
The next stop was at Algiers, in North¬ 
ern Africa, where oranges, lemons, gua¬ 
vas, bananas, etc., were found in pro¬ 
fusion. All showed the effect of recent 
cold, but had not suffered as much as in 
Spain. The orange groves were set out 
in a much more crowded way, the trees 
being only 12 or 15 feet apart, and, like 
in Spain, all pruned up very high. The 
mandarine oranges are raised very ex¬ 
tensively in Algiers, and are of a most 
excellent quality—in fact all the oranges 
here are very good indeed. 
After visiting Greece, Turkey and 
Asia Minor, where olives and figs are 
raised extensively, and oranges are grown 
in a rather limited way, and where they 
suffer a great deal from cold every win¬ 
ter, the next place of interest from an 
horticultural standpoint was Jaffa in Pal¬ 
estine. 
Jaffa is the home of the very best or¬ 
anges we have seen outside of Florida, if 
an exception be made in favor of a blood 
navel found in a small way on the island 
of Malta. The cultivation of the orange 
in Jaffa is more wonderful to a Florida 
grower than is the delicious character of 
the fruit. The trees are planted in rows 
not more than seven or eight feet apart, 
and not more than five or six feet distant 
from one another in the rows. All culti¬ 
vation is done with hoes-and spades and 
they dig deep everywhere, even close up 
to the trees. They have a loose sandy 
soil, richer apparently than ours and their 
only knowledge of fertilizers seems to be 
confined to barn yard manure. 
When the trees get so large as to make 
them too close together for convenient 
cultivation and harvesting the fruit, they 
cut them off alternately in the rows and 
rebud the sprouts, I do not think any 
trees are allowed to get more than ten 
or twelve feet high before they are thus 
treated. I was told by a man whose 
family are the most extensive growers in 
this country that small thrifty trees close 
together gave larger returns per acre and 
better fruit than any other system of cul¬ 
ture they had been able to devise. 
Egypt was found to be almost as won¬ 
derful from an horticultural and agricul¬ 
tural view as it is from an ethnological 
and historical standpoint. At Cario in 
latitude 30 degrees north, where it never 
rains and where the climate in much 
warmer especially in summer, than in 
Jacksonville, we found many things to in¬ 
terest us. We were fortunate enough to 
secure an introduction to the Director of 
the Botanical and Zoological gardens, 
who kindly devoted a forenoon to show¬ 
ing us through the wonderfully rich pos¬ 
sessions under his management, includ¬ 
ing rare specimens of all kinds of fruits 
and plants that grow, in this lavishly 
productive country. Everything we ever 
saw growing in Florida seemed to flour¬ 
ish here, including two splendid real 
American alligators kept in a pool enclos¬ 
ed by wire netting, separating them from 
the Crocodiles. It seemed like ineeting 
friends from home, and after long asso¬ 
ciation with Arabs, camels, donkeys, etc., 
it cheered us up wonderfully. 
We were also fortunate enough to be 
in Cairo at the time of the Egyptian Hor¬ 
ticultural Exposition, conducted with a 
great flourish under the auspices of the 
Khedive, who by the way is a very pleas¬ 
ant appearing, popular and democratic 
monarch. The Exposition had a few 
very fine exhibits of fruits and some of 
the finest kinds of large appetizing appear¬ 
ing vegetables, also a beautiful show of 
flowers and tropical plants, but taken as 
a whole it did not begin to come up to the 
