36 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ieet; but even here they are rarely more 
than seventy-five or one hundred miles 
from the Gulf or Pacific Coasts. 
I saw no large or thrifty looking trees 
in Mexico, and in fact I have never seen 
trees anywhere as large and vigorous 
looking as we have in Florida, 
Oranges grown to maturity in the 
tropics are frequently wormy and us¬ 
ually sweet, almost to insipidity; hence 
they are generally harvested when 
intended for shipping before ripe. The 
delicious, snappy subacid flavor that 
makes the orange so attractive requires 
some cool weather. 
Long, continuous heat without cold 
snaps which we, perhaps wrongly, dread 
so much, has a tendency to encourage 
all kinds of predatory insects, described 
and indescribable and some others be¬ 
sides. 
If there is a deficiency in precipitation, 
mean or relative humidity, to get the 
best results it must be made up by irri¬ 
gation. In those places, as Florida and 
Mexico, where there is a summer rainy 
season, the ripening of the fruit is some¬ 
what accelerated and it reaches maturity 
shortly after the close of the wet season. 
On the other hand, a dry summer and 
rainy season in the winter, as in Cali¬ 
fornia, has a tendency to retard the time 
of ripening. 
As to soil, it may be said that a littoral 
alluvium rich in sand is the best. The 
writer’s observations lead him to say that 
he has seldom seen a profitable orange¬ 
growing district in which there was not 
a rich supply of sand in the soil. 
There have been so many scares re¬ 
cently that it may be worth while to say 
a few words as to change of climate, 
about which of late vears we have been 
talking so much, but perhaps no more 
than people have feared and discussed 
for the past five or six thousand years. 
There is a probability susceptible of 
proof that within the period of recorded 
history there has been absolutely no 
change of climate, with the exception of 
slight local changes due to destruction 
or planting of forests, cultivation of * 
crops, irrigation, etc. 
In the marvelously storied land of 
Egypt the same cereals, fruits and veg¬ 
etables are planted and harvested at the 
same time of the year they were thou¬ 
sands of years before the time of the 
Pharaohs. In Palestine, if not since the 
antedeluvian period, certainly and posi¬ 
tively since the time of Moses there has 
been no change. The seed time and the 
harvest time of the same staples, includ¬ 
ing seasonal festivals of the Syrians are 
still on the same dates. The same is true 
of Europe, and the brief history of Amer¬ 
ica offers no other kind of evidence. 
Meteorologists have from time to time 
advanced many plausible theories as to 
the causes that operate to produce sudden 
changes and extremes of weather. Solar 
heat is thought to be the main, if not the 
only source of warmth. Planetary in¬ 
fluences as disturbing causes have had 
many advocates and a Frenchman has 
recently suggested that the earth revolv¬ 
ing in its orbit has a motion like a spin¬ 
ning top, and from time to time wobbles 
nearer to or farther from the sun, with¬ 
out any possible regularity; hence the 
absence of periodicity as time in the oc¬ 
currence of severe changes. All theories 
so far advanced, it seems, are almost 
purely speculative, and probably extremes 
of temperature are caused largely, if not 
solely, by local disturbances and move¬ 
ments of the atmosphere. It is scarcely 
two hundred years since accurate instru- 
