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Show DEBT DUE TO BRAZIL FROM THAT COUNTRY CAME FIRST SEEDLESS ORANGES, Fruit That Has Added Millions of Dollars Dol-lars to the Wealth of the Country-Had Country-Had Remarkable Vicissitudes Is Freak of Nature. The Introduction of the sccdle.. naval o ran go has revolutionized the orango Industry of the United States It has drawn 13,000 men from other pursuits nnd transformed vant areas of sunbaked land in California into orango groves. It has been tho prlmo factor In the growth of a dozen towns of 5,000 and 10,000 pa, sons in southern California, Cali-fornia, and linn added directly more than $43,000,000 and Indirectly G0,-000,000 G0,-000,000 more to tho taxable wealth of the state. The first seedless orange trees were apparently freaks of nature, and their counterparts have never been found Early In the 70s William Judson United States consul to Bahla, -Brazil, heard nn account from natives of a few trees In tho swamps on the bankt of tho Amazon, .some sixty miles nway. Ho sent n native up tho river to get somo of tho fruit from the tree. When the nntlvo returned tho consul was delighted with thu specimens and sent six of the shoots, carefully packed In moss nnd clay, to the department de-partment of agriculture at Washington. Washing-ton. Tho trees did jiot excite much Interest In-terest nt the department. Two, which woro planted In tho department grounds, died for lack of care, atid tho others were forgotten for months. Four cuttings wore planted ngaln in December of 1873 In southern California. Cali-fornia. O110 of tho shoots died from neglect; one was broken and chewed by n cow. Five years passed and tho two remaining re-maining shoots came Into bearing. Theso sixteen seedless oranges woro tho first over grown In tho United States. Tho specimens wero carried about southern California and shown to ranchmen nnd fruit growors. 'TWio second crop was awnltcd with great curiosity, for it was feared that in a fow years tho fruit would becomo hard and tough. There wero nbout a box of oranges In tho second yield nnd they wero oven bettor than tho first crop. Tho planting of groves of seedless oranges propagated from tho buds from the two original trees began In earnest in 1882. Tho following year tho demand for buds was so largo that a dozen buds sold frequently for 5 and somo growors paid oven as high as $1 uplcco for them. .In 18S9 the two Tlbbett trees furnished fur-nished buds which sold for $15,000 and a tall fence was built around thorn to keep pcoplo from stealing tho buds. A year or two later tho orango or-ango trees which had been propagated propa-gated from tho Tlbbett trees began to bear and they thcmsolvos furnished tens of thousands of navel buds as good as from tho original trees. Then tho first navel orango treea began to bear fruit, nnd from that tluio tho Ijoom In navel oranges was us-Bmed. us-Bmed. Now York Herald. |