things, but miss more than I recognize! I think I must yield the palm to you in oranges, but in all other varieties of citrus, you must take a back seat. Our guava is a royal heritage, only we have not yet found how to market them. We have about twenty varieties and thousands upon thousands of bearing trees. The fruit delicious to a cultivated taste fresh from the tree, while every housewife in the land, and every lover of sweets, can descant with eloquence upon the marmalades and jellies made of this desirable fruit. The tree is hardy with us, and will take care of and propagate itself, and is on terms of great cordiality with our rocky plantations. It should bear in three years. Ours is the natural country of the lime, lemon and citron; children of a common stock. We have several varieties of the lime. The trees are of rapid growth, constant bearers, very prolific, subject to no disease, and very tenacious of life. The fruit is large, “How large?” as a Sicily lemon. I consider the lime as profitable as the orange, and more so, with us. It should be cultivated for citric acid, of which it yields more than any other fruit. The time will come when our part of Florida will supply citric acid to the world. A peck of limes will yield a gallon of juice; one and a half gallons of juice should produce one pound of citric acid, which in the markets of the world should bring $1.25 in gold.  * * *  Lime trees will bear in three years and can be planted as thick as blackberry bushes, but to cultivate them, they should be eight to ten feet apart. Too much attention can not be given to this matter. Citric acid is a commodity always, everywhere, and increasingly in demand. The lime belt is narrow and limited. Ours is the most productive in the world. The limes are larger than those of any other country and the percentage of acid is perceptibly greater. Fortunes await in this department of industry alone, and the outlay of money to get a start is insignificant compared to the planting of an orange grove. Ours is the country of the palm and the cocoanut. The tree grows with us enormously and bears continuously. They are meat and drink in a thirsty land. Then we have the mango and maumee apple, fruits one soon becomes familiar with, after which, intimacy is never interrupted. But the sugar apple is, from my point of view and experience, the choicest of all. There is nothing comparable to it. “Exquisite” is a nice word, and orange, mango, maumee, avocado pear, pine-apple, banana, are names, the bare mention of which sets one’s mouth watering, but gentlemen, they are all, compared with the sugar apple, common things! I can give you no adequate idea of it, and I will not attempt to put my experience of its lusciousness into mere English, for after all is said that may be said, the apple itself must be seen, handled (very tenderly) and eaten when, gentlemen, you must come down to Dade to eat the proof of my words. (Some one in the audience; can’t you send us a few?) No; for two or three reasons. First, to pull a sugar apple is to eat it. Second, some one would be sure to capture it on the way. Third, it must be eaten where it grows. (SOLON ROBINSON—How does it taste?) Ah! my friend, ask the lover how the pure kiss of affection tastes, and he will describe it accurately. The fruit immortalizes our country, and a true description of its deliciousness, its creamy, frosted sweetness, its fragrance beneath the dimpled protecting ring will immortalize its author. Of the alligator pear, I need not speak at large. They are brought in large quantities to Key West from Cuba every year, and readily sell at from forty to seventy-five cents per dozen. They grow well with us. The fruit is large, and love of it is acquired; but once truly relished, bread is at a discount. Ours is the banana’s own country, and shortly this delicious and valuable fruit will receive a large share of our attention. The pine-apple belongs to us; nothing grows better. It is peculiarly adapted to our rock soil, and will thrive and bear fruit if a hole is made in the soft rock for its accommodation. Our soft rock is admirably adapted for building purposes. It is easily worked but soon hardens when exposed to the sun and air, and then coheres like public plunder! When burned it is first-rate for lime and mortar, and also as a fertilizer.” Mr. HICKS in answer to the question, whether he would advise emigration, said, “yes; but I would advertise to all, that it is no country for a lazy man without means. A man with money to keep him in necessaries for a couple of years could get a paying start and so go on to fortune. Industry pays quite as well there as in any part of the globe.” R. M. BACHE, of Philadelphia, author of “The Young Wrecker of the Florida Reef,” writes: “The climate of Biscayne Bay, like that of all the Reef, is wonderfully equable and pleasant, insular in its character, rarely oppressively

hot in the shade, and during most of the year leaving nothing to be desired regarding enjoyability, the only trying weather being an occasional “norther.” Fish as well as turtle, are abundant, and game of various kinds on the land. The impressions I have about the soil, is that it is very fertile; I do not see how, from its formation, it could be otherwise.” Capt. GIBBS of Buffalo, N. Y., writes from Biscayne Bay, under dates of March 14th and April 7th, and 25th, 1876 (to his wife and Mr. J. P. TRIBLE): “I am in love with this country; the climate is simply everything that is beautiful, it is all and more than all that has been said of it. There has never been a case of ague that I can hear of. I do not wish to come back, and shall not if you will come down here. I have not had an ache, pain, cough or sneeze, since I have been here.” (He left Buffalo with a bad cough.) “Two men can raise more stuff, off from ten acres of land here, than four times the number can from a hundred acres in the North. With irrigation in the winter season, there is no end to the growth of everything. Squashes (they call them pumpkins here) once planted, grow forever. Sweet potatoes the same, and many other things.”  * * * * *  There is a man from Orange county, who says the pine land here is better than in Orange county, and he is coming down to settle, this side of New River, so as to get below the frost line.  * * *  Bermuda grass grows luxuriantly. I have seen it on both pine and hammock lands. You can have green peas, new potatoes, cabbage, onions, etc., every month in the year, they had them at Christmas and New Years.” Capt. GIBBS proposes to plant on the place he has purchased on the Bay, ten thousand cocoanut trees, which are expected to bear in six years, and will require no care whatever, save to be fenced in for protection from stock while growing. One hundred nuts to the tree (which is only one fourth what may be expected when in full bearing) would give a pretty fair income, at the lowest price $15.00 per thousand, paid on the ground by buyers. DANIEL G. BRINTON, A. M., M. D., in his book for tourists, and invalids, (“Florida and the South”), says of Biscayne Bay: “Undoubtedly the finest winter climate in the United States, both in point of temperature and health, is to be found on the Southeastern coast of Florida. It is earnestly to be hoped, for the sake of invalids, that accommodations along the shore at Key Biscayne, and at the mouth of the Miami, will before

long be provided. While it is the very

best, it could also be made the most accessible part of the sea coast of Florida, as the whole journey from the North