Orange-trees grow exceedingly well in pots and boxes, but they should be raised from the floor and well drained. The temperature of the soil required for producing fruit in perfection, Is from a maximum of 85° to a minimum of 58°. In England the soil seldom reaches ee, and often sinks to 36'; therefore, except in forcing-houses nothing can be expected from the plant but its flowers, the fruit if formed being small and tasteless. Yet the tree is hardy, and will live through an English winter if kept in the dark and dry. After the flowering, instead of allowing the wood to grow, continental gardeners clip them round into perfect globes with the hedge-shears. To use the knife would be better, but the practice Is right ; it rids the trees of super fluous matters, insures the maturing of the buds on the short branches left, the sap is thrown back Into the buds, and thus elaborated Into perfect flower-buds for the ensuing eeaaon. Trees so treated, and kept pretty dry from November till March, remain perfectly safe under an opaque roof. With us, the growing season is not favourable enough to ripen the wood without the aid of covering ; and that, to insure health and abundance of bloom (the only thing to be sought for), must be transparent. These remarks apply to the lemon as well as to the
orange.
Mr. St. John (` Travels in the Valley of the Nile ') says, he saw a tree produced by joining the seed of the citron, the orange, and the lemon. The external coating being removed from one, this was placed between the other two, from which the coating of one side only had been removed. They were then bound together with a fine grass and planted ; the result was a fruit combining beneath one rind, but dis tinctly marked both internally and externally, the qualities of the three species of which the seeds had been used.
(See the work of Risso of Nice, and Poiteaux of Versailles, Histoire Nattovlle des Oranges, where 169 sorts are described, and 105 of them figured ; also that of Gallezio, Troia du genus Citrus, who has given an account of the 40 different kinds cultivated in Italy ; and Mr. Loudon's Encyd. of Gardening.)