FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
21 
land us in West Virginia, after having 
covered portions of the States of Ala¬ 
bama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennes¬ 
see and Virginia. Pursuing a still more 
northerly direction, we can land in 
Northern Kentucky, almost up to Cin¬ 
cinnati, O. Flying north and northwest, 
we can land one-third of the way up the 
States of Indiana or Illinois, or the cen¬ 
ter of the State of Missouri; or, with 
just a few extra revoultions of our pro¬ 
peller, can land in Southeastern Kan¬ 
sas. In an almost westerly direction, 
we would land near Austin, the capital of 
Texas, or, trending a little more to the 
southwest, almost reach Corpus Christi. 
Directly south or directly east we would 
not care to fly, or at least to light when 
our five hundred and fifty miles were 
completed. In the one direction we 
would land in deep water well down the 
Gulf of Mexico, with nothing more 
tangible to grasp at than the Tropic of 
Cancer, and in the other direction we 
would disappear from sight in the At¬ 
lantic, two hundred miles east of Fer- 
nandina. 
VAST DISTANCES. 
Now, while some of us might find this 
flying to be a pleasant sensation, others 
of us might not, and as none of us are 
yet used to it, and our airship might not 
accommodate us all, let us take a map 
of the United States and a pair of com¬ 
passes, and drawing a circle with the 
northwestern point of Florida for its 
center and our southeastern mainland on 
its periphery, attain the same results. 
This circle will not only corroborate the 
distances named, but also show us that 
there are fifteen States and one Territory 
—one-third of all the States and Terri¬ 
tories in this country prior to the Spanish 
war—that are, either in whole or in part, 
nearer to the State of Florida than the 
two extremities of our State are to each 
other. (As a matter of fact, there is one 
other State that comes within the dis¬ 
tance, but not within the circle; this is 
Ohio, the southern extremity of which is 
nearer to Fernandina than our north¬ 
western extremity is to our southeast¬ 
ern.) 
Now, if these figures and comparisons 
applied to a State situated farther north, 
surrounded on all sides by other States, 
the situation, while still admitting of 
plenty of work on our part, would be 
vastly simplified. In that case we would 
be one of a cluster of States having, hor- 
ticulturally speaking, much in common. 
We could consult horticultural papers 
and horticultural reports of States ad¬ 
joining us on the east or west or south, 
and obtain valuable information from 
our neighbors working under similar 
conditions of soil and climate. But 
when we consider that the only two 
States with which we come in contact are 
those that constitute our northern 
boundary, and that, leaving these, our 
State immediately trends southward into 
salt water and warmer latitudes, our 
unique position and comparative isola¬ 
tion among the sisterhood of States be¬ 
comes doubly apparent; we realize more 
fully how much we are thrown upon our 
own horticultural resources. I am 
happy to say that these resources have 
never yet failed us—and are not likely 
to. 
Returning again to our map and sur¬ 
veying the territory over which our 
northeastern flight took us, we will find 
that while yet in mid-air before the flight 
was half completed we w r ere passing over 
