In the first place, it may be well to enlarge a little on the subject of deficient moisture the average orchard is liable to on prairie and all other Western soils of a drift origin, where the strata lie nearly parallel to the plane of the earth’s surface. Here there are, therefore, few, if any, of those springs or fountains of water which often supply abundant moisture to land of considerable slope and elevation. If this difference in geological conditions is taken into account, it will explain why, in many sections, orchards often do quite remarkably well on hillsides and mountain slopes. There is little or no resemblance between the apple tree and the orange tree, when both are botanically considered; but considered from the point of view as a source of fruit, the one is the best product of warm climates, and the other of cold ones; both being esteemed nearly universally. The orange being a very juicy, and at the same time, a fruit in which sweet and sour are equally blended, requires a moist soil and a large supply of water, in addition to a relatively high temperature. Accordingly, when grown in warm but dry climates, as in Spain and along the north shore of the Mediterranean, the ground bearing orange trees is uniformly copiously irrigated two or three times a month, during the warm season, and every two months in the winter. The orange-producing portion of Louisiana is mostly confined to the sixty or seventy square miles of cultivatable land along the Mississippi river banks, south of New Orleans. Here the soil is alluvial and sandy, the rainfall sixty or seventy inches per annum, and the state of the atmosphere so continuously humid, as to drape all arboreal vegetation with moss. Florida has the same rainfall, the same humid atmosphere, the same moss, with the advantage of a soil quite as sandy, in which, as constitutes elements, phosphoric acid and potash abound in far greater proportions than in the alluvial of the Mississippi. And it is probably due to this happy association of heat, humidity, a sandy soil, rich in the phosphates of lime and salts of potash, that Florida oranges really are, and are regarded the best in the world. But in spite of these advantages, and another, no less important—that by capillary attraction, through the sand—the orange roots have direct and easy access to water beneath; it is found that the trees do better if mulched to prevent evaporation during the cool months—they being the dry season, while the summer months are the wet. The Louisiana orange-growers go farther; they not only mulch liberally with rice straw every year, but in addition, every third or fourth year, from eight inches to a foot of the earth under the trees is removed and new earth put in its place.