"Twelve Years Ago," Said An Acquaintance Of Mine, "When I First Visited
St. Augustine, It Was A Fine Old Spanish Town.
A large proportion of the
houses, which you now see roofed like barns, were then flat-roofed, they
were all of shell-rock, and these modern wooden buildings were not yet
erected.
That old fort, which they are now repairing, to fit it for
receiving a garrison, was a sort of ruin, for the outworks had partly
fallen, and it stood unoccupied by the military, a venerable monument of
the Spanish dominion. But the orange-groves were the ornament and wealth
of St. Augustine, and their produce maintained the inhabitants in comfort.
Orange-trees, of the size and height of the pear-tree, often rising higher
than the roofs of the houses, embowered the town in perpetual verdure.
They stood so close in the groves that they excluded the sun and the
atmosphere was at all times aromatic with their leaves and fruit, and in
spring the fragrance of the flowers was almost oppressive."
These groves have now lost their beauty. A few years since, a severe
frost killed the trees to the ground, and when they sprouted again from
the roots, a new enemy made its appearance - an insect of the _coccus_
family, with a kind of shell on its back, which enables it to withstand
all the common applications for destroying insects, and the ravages of
which are shown by the leaves becoming black and sere, and the twigs
perishing.
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