The land on which I am located is spruce-pine, interspersed with water-oak and scrub palmetto, which would be pronounced by the average Floridian worthless. I had at the commencement, and still have, abiding faith in the white sand of Florida with a mulatto sub-soil. No matter how white the surface, if underlaid by a mulatto or yellow sub-soil, the citrus family will thrive. The foliage of my young trees is dark green, and their vigorous growth astonishes the "crackers," who predicted a failure. Owing to the mildness of the climate--my location being exempt from frost--my trees grew all last winter. My orange trees are set in parallel rows, thirty feet apart each way; the lemon and lime trees twenty-five feet apart; the bananas twelve feet, and the pineapples two feet apart. I hoe my grove every two months, and plow it four times a year. Thus, by keeping the soil constantly tickled with the hoe, my trees laugh with a bountiful foliage. What I have done, can be performed by others. There is no secret about the matter. We welcome immigrants from the frigid North, from the prairies of the West, and from the lands beyond the sea. To all we say, come and tarry with us. Florida, the first State belonging to the Union, discovered and settled by Europeans, has, during the past 350 years, been hustled about from pillar to post like a shuttle-cock. The repeated Indian wars from 1816 to 1858, rendered life so insecure, that the early settlers literally carried their lives in their hands. Is it then a matter of surprise that Florida is so sparsely populated? Mr. J. S. Adams, former Commissioner of Immigration, truthfully remarks: "The wonder truly is, not that she has not attained a more flourishing condition, but that she exists at all, and that her boundless forests, her lovely rivers and her beautiful lakes are not fast locked in the silent embrace of a moveless desolation." Since slavery, which rested like an incubus of original sin on the soil of Florida, has been removed, immigration has been pouring in from the North and the West, and from the isles of the ocean. Germany, Italy, France and England have each furnished their quota, and the forests along the line of the railroads, as well as those accessible by steamboats, are beginning to show the effects of an advanced civilization. The gigantic undertaking of draining Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, together with the construction of a ship canal, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico, by Mr. Hamilton Disston, of Philadelphia, and his coadjutors, is proof positive that a new era is beginning to dawn on the Land of Flowers, and, ere many years, the southern portion of the State will be one vast orange grove, interspersed with the guava, lemon, lime, pine-apple and banana. I hear the skeptic say: "You will overstock the market, and your fruit will not pay the cost of transportation." The orange _par excellence_ can be