Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1901 — California Oranges. [ARTICLE]

California Oranges.

Everybody who eats them has prouably noticed that New York’s supply of Callfornla oranges has never before been so plentiful and cheap and good as now. You can get big, sweet, juicy navel oranges as low as two for a nickel. .... Florida oranges have practically been out of the market since the big freeze in the fall of 1897. They will find things somewhat changed when they get back. A few years ago the superiority of the Florida orange, particularly the Indian Bi ver product, was unquestioned. The California orangs was coarse-grained, less juicy than the Floridas, deficient in flavor and full of a stringy pulp that was both disagreeable to the eater and hard upon the digestion. But a wonderful improvement has been made within a comparatively short time. The California orange today la still coarse-grained and atill lacks some of the delicate flavor of the Florida or the Messina fruit, but its flavor has been vastly improved; it is brimming with juice and the tough fibre In the best grade of oranges has almost entirely disappeared. It is not generally known that thia horticultural device for doing away with the seeds in the ripened fruit was introduced in this country by an observant American woman who called attention of the Department of Agriculture to it This woman while trav- > eling In the Province of Bahia, Brazil, in 1868, observed that the oranges of that province were much superior to those raised in the United States, and seedless as welL She communicated with the Commissioner of Agriculture, and as a result twelve young plants were sent from Brazil to Washington. —New York Sun.