were much excited over the seedless fruit.

Such high prices were paid for these oranges at first, that orange
growing boomed all over Southern California. People thought their
fortunes were made when they set out a few acres of small budded trees
they had paid a dollar or more apiece for. Whole towns sprang up in
dry treeless valleys where only cattle and sheep had pastured,
and land worth only twenty-five dollars an acre before the orange
excitement, sold quickly for eight hundred and a thousand when planted
with trees. The towns of Pomona, Redlands, Monrovia, and others in
the orange localities were unknown before 1885, and grew to several
thousand population in a few years. Everybody talked of the great
profit in orange growing, and people who had nurseries of young trees
grown from navel buds made fortunes.

At this day thousands of acres of seedless oranges are in full bearing
and no one buys the old kinds. Hundreds of car-loads of the seedlings
are not even picked, and ninety per cent of the eighteen thousand
car-loads which make the season's orange crop are navel oranges. Over
forty-five millions of dollars are now invested in the growing and
marketing of this remarkable fruit.

At Riverside, the home of the orange, the two original Washington
navel trees still stand. Mr. Tibbets guarded them for years, had them
fenced with high latticework, and seldom allowed any one to touch
them. He refused ten thousand dollars for them, since for months he
sold hundreds of dollars' worth of buds from these parent trees. These
two trees and their large family have caused thousands of people to
come to the state, and have built up Southern California wonderfully.

THE LEMON

For many years people who use that sour but necessary fruit, the
lemon, thought that only the little yellow ones which came from the
far-away island of Sicily were good. The men who import foreign fruits
always said so; and in spite of the fact that the larger California
lemon was more acid, of as good flavor, smooth skinned, and golden,
people believed the Mediterranean groves produced the best. But, at
last, our warm, dry air, good soil, and plenty of water, together with
care and skill while growing and packing, have made California lemons
the most in demand. These lemons keep well, and bear shipping and long
journeys better than the imported fruit.

Citrus fruits, as the orange and lemon are called, do well in all the
southern counties,