13 NOVEMBER 1886, Page 24

Oranges and Alligators. By Ira Daffas Hardy. (Ward and Downey.)—A

timely book about a sunny land, and so pleasantly written, that even when Mrs. Hardy gossips idly, and describes at length commonplace scenes and trivial incidents, she is never otherwise than entertaining. Florida is an interesting corner of the United States, blessed with a winter as mild as the most genial of English summers, and where the invalid who migrates South to escape the rigour of a Northern climate may find agreeable society, and all the comforts of civilisation. Bat Mrs. Hardy, combining the useful with the entertaining, gives good advice and valuable information to intending emigrants. Florida's chief industry is orange-growing, and there is every reason to believe that it is both profitable and attractive, though not so easily mastered as many sanguine people have been led to suppose. There are two ways of acquiring an orange. grove. You may either make one or buy one ready made ; but the making process is very slow, the baying method very costly. In the one case, the planter purchases a bit of primeval forest at a low figure, clears it, sets his plants, nurses them lovingly, and waits patiently, for eight years must pass before his trees begin to bear, twelve before they attain fall maturity. The other alternative is to bay a grove of full-grown trees. As touching prices, Mrs. Hardy quotes from the list of a local land-agent the particulars of several properties offered for sale. One is a five.acre grove, "with 350 trees, budded ; five years from the bud," not a full-grown grove by any means ; the price asked was $1,600. Another consists of sixty acres, of which six acres only aro cleared, with 150 bearing and 1,000 nursery trees, price $5,000. The third is an estate of forty acres, with 2,000 trees, of which 1,500 are bearing, together with a good house, and a garden, producing guavas, pine-apples, dec., the whole valued at $30,000. Hence capital is indispensable ; but if the settler be strong of body and resolute of character, clears his own land, plants his own trees, and is willing to work while his grove grows, he may make a little money go a long way, and a plantation of bearing trees is as good as an annuity, and gives little more trouble. Living is very cheap, too, and for chilly people the climate is all that could be desired. The winters are simply delicious, and the summers, though decidedly warm, are less trying and oppressive than the summers of the North. Eastern States.