98 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Our next stop after leaving Japan was 
at Hongkong, China. This is an Eng¬ 
lish possession in the latitude, or a little 
further south, as I remember, than Key 
West. We spent quite a little time here 
making an excursion some hundred miles 
up the Pearl river, to Canton, that won¬ 
derful city which has had a population of 
two million people, it is claimed, ever 
since before the Christian era. They 
claim considerably more than two million 
people now. I do not believe anybody has 
any kind of an accurate idea of how many 
people there really are in the city, but 
there are a great plenty. They say that 
half a million live in boats on the water. 
I think from what I saw there are more. 
Mr. Fairchild, of the Bureau of Plant 
Industry, commissioned me to look out 
for him, as well as I could with my lim¬ 
ited time, as to the best method of prop¬ 
agating the Leitchee, a tropical fruit 
found in China. Probably its most com¬ 
mon habitat is along the Pearl river, from 
Hongkong to Canton. They are, to look 
at from the steamer, in rich, dark green 
foliage, very much like orange trees—I 
thought they were. I do not wonder Mr. 
Fairchild is anxious to find some method 
of propagating the Leitchee. It is about 
the size of a very large chestnut, burr and 
all, the outer covering resembling an un¬ 
opened chestnut burr very much, only it 
is the color of a strawberry, and the 
prickly-looking spines are soft. Some 
large strawberries have recently been in¬ 
troduced into China where they were for¬ 
merly unknown, and some of the Chinese 
take them for Leitchees. I saw a young 
fellow walking along from one boat to 
another in the boat community at Canton 
with a large tray, and thinking to have 
some fun with him, I asked, “Leitchee ?” 
He said with a very disgusted air: “No, 
no; tawbelly.” 
When you peel the outer covering from 
the leitchee it discloses several pearly- 
white, creamy segments that are delicious 
beyond description. It equals peaches 
and cream; it beats guavas; it beats al¬ 
most anything I know of in the way of 
fruits. Mr. Fairchild desires to find some 
method of propagating it other than 
through the seed, which is unsatisfactory. 
Prof. Groff, at Christian College, Canton, 
who co-operated with me, told me to say 
to Mr. Fairchild that if he wanted to raise 
the leitchee, he would probably have to 
do it like the Chinese do. The Chinese 
method is to put a ball of clay tied on in 
canvas around a limb of the tree, then 
partly girdling the limb. In a short time 
roots are shot out into the ball of clay 
and the limb is cut off and set out in the 
ground. This is the only way they seem 
to think that the tree can be successfully 
propagated. Mr. Fairchild tells me since 
my return that he has succeeded in get¬ 
ting some kind of a stock upon which he 
hopes to succeed in raising the leitchee. 
I think it would grow in South Florida. 
It is worth a tremendous lot of work to 
get it here, and I hope he may be able to 
introduce it. 
The orange may possibly have origi¬ 
nated in China. I don’t think any of us 
know just where it did originate, but it 
has been known from time out of mind in 
China, and it was the only place where I 
found round oranges that were sweet and 
good to the taste of a Floridian. 
In all those tropical, oriental countries, 
they raise what they call the “loose¬ 
skinned” orange, and have many varieties 
