FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
151 
seed itself. On top, a thin coat of fine, 
clean sand may be put, to keep the seed¬ 
lings from damping off. When the seeds 
have germinated, and have two or more 
leaves above ground, pot them in two or 
three-inch pots in the same mixture of 
soil as mentioned above. When they are 
well rooted here and danger from frost 
is over, they may be set out in their per¬ 
manent location. 
The selections I have mentioned for 
various purposes might be considerably 
extended, but I have endeavored to con¬ 
fine my list to a few of the best only, and 
those that I have had personal experience 
with. 
TROPICAL POSSIBILITIES OF FLORIDA, AND HOW TO ACHIEVE 
THEM. 
Mrs. Marian A. McAdow. 
The only part of the United States that 
dips down close to the tropical zone is 
Florida, with a comparatively small area 
of a little over 54,000 square miles. Cal¬ 
ifornia has made a reputation for herself 
for many tropical characteristics, but it is 
because she can raise certain types of 
plants belonging to the tropics that will 
stand a low degree of cold, the past win¬ 
ter having proved most conclusively that 
many of them can stand 20 degrees below 
the freezing point. 
Florida can grow not only these, but she 
can grow nearly every tree and plant that 
makes Ceylon and India dreams of tropi¬ 
cal verdure. There may be some that can¬ 
not be suited with our soil and climate, 
but enough there are of a striking charac¬ 
ter to make a paradise of the spot that can 
produce them. 
Over in California they have made the 
most of such tropical trees, shrubs and 
vines as will grow there and they have 
been planted so profusely that a visitor to 
that State comes away with the impression 
that he has been sojourning in the tropics. 
If the people of our State were as much 
alive to their possibilities as those of Cal¬ 
ifornia have been to theirs, we could have 
a wonderland here right now that would 
attract the attention of the whole world. 
Nor would it be the work of more than - 
five to ten years to accomplish this trans¬ 
formation if we could all be imbued with 
the same idea, and every man, woman and 
child could be made to feel his individual 
responsibility in the matter. The club 
women all over our land are extending 
their interests yearly, and they have, with¬ 
out a doubt, accomplished some splendid 
reforms, but if the time that has been 
spent on courses in “The Music of Shake¬ 
speare,'’ “The Poetry of the Brownings,” 
and “The Art of the Renaissance,” were 
expended on the practical every-day neces¬ 
sities of the community in which they 
live, we wouldn’t have range cattle and 
razor-back hogs roaming our streets, cre¬ 
ating disease by their filth; we’d stamp out 
typhoid fever and malaria; we’d eradicate 
